Yam Red Date and Coconut Gula Melaka Mooncakes

As someone who loves innovative flavours, I recently bought two boxes of mooncakes from Yong Sheng, namely the Colour of Autumn and Field of Autumn boxes, since those two had the most unusual flavours. The flavours aren't clear from the English names, so I can only describe the flavours from the Colour of Autumn box which is the first box that I've tried. They are the purple Auspicious Mooncake (coconut milk yam with red date paste core), the green Gula Melaka Mooncake (lotus paste with gula melaka coconut flakes core), Pineapple Lava Mooncake (pineapple puree filling with salted egg yolk paste in the middle) and Rose Redbean Mooncake (rose redbean paste, no separate core). At least, this is my best guess based on the appearance, taste and what's listed on the ingredients list.

The boxes were very pretty!

I started with the green and purple ones. The purple one was an interesting combination. While coconut milk yam is common, the pairing with red date paste was unusual. When I tried the 2 different pastes individually, I could indeed distinguish the coconut milk yam and red date flavours. For those not familiar with red date paste, it's like a slightly caramelised winey honey flavour. But both were faint. When I ate the whole thing in one mouthful, the predominant flavour was the coconut milk, with the red date paste providing some honey-like sweetness. While it was interesting theoretically, the execution of the pairing wasn't very coherent. 

The green one had a more distinct gula melaka and coconut flake taste, but perhaps because of the surrounding lotus paste, it wasn't as strong overall when I ate the whole slice together. Perhaps that's the preference of this pastry chef, for the flavours to be milder and more muted?

In my opinion, both of them should perhaps have been baked longer too, but I wonder if they were trying to imitate the snow skin effect for the colour. Although these were baked skins (at least judging from how refrigeration isn't required and the baked skin texture of the skins), there was no hint of browning that I could see. The colours were quite intense and vibrant. And what I didn't like personally was the distinctness of the flour taste. If it had been baked a bit more I expect the raw flour taste wouldn't have been as strong. Perhaps I should have thought of it more as a snow skin mooncake.

The next flavours will be featured in a separate post. But overall, from the 4 flavours in this box that I've tried so far, it's interesting for exploration, but probably not something I would gift to others or buy on a regular basis.

Want to see other interesting mooncake flavours? Check out other unusual mooncakes here!