The most common mooncakes these days are the Cantonese mooncakes, sold by most bakeries and hotels during the Mid-Autumn Festival season. But there are actually many other traditional types of mooncakes. In particular, the Hainanese variant is getting rare these days, with not many bakeries offering it. So when Amethyst Pastry & Cakes featured their take at their stall, I had to try.
The most traditional of the lot is actually the Hainanese Pepper Salt Crispy Mooncake in the top left, followed by the Hainanese Fusion Mooncake in the bottom right. The middle 2 mooncakes are actually usually called Shanghai-style mooncakes, although Amethyst named them as Cantonese.
Hainanese Pepper Salt Crispy Mooncake
This was the most unusual, interesting and tasty mooncake of the lot. The "skin" is actually closer to a Chinese cookie crust. From the colour, you can tell that the dough was actually very pale and almost white, but turned yellower and slightly brown from the baking process.
I reheated it to get the best texture, and after reheating, it had the pleasant fine sandy and crumbly texture of a melt-in-your mouth crumbly Chinese cookie (think of the crumbly Macau-style almond cookies, just wheat-based and without the almond or bean flavours). Like traditional sandy Chinese cookies, it wasn't buttery, and the taste was a light wheat-based pastry. The texture was accurately described as crispy, but in the crumbly fine-sand way, not like croissants or komeko/rice flour breads. I think this texture and crust was the most interesting part of the mooncake that I've not seen in other mooncakes before.
The filling was the same as other traditional Hainanese mooncakes. The first thing that hit me was the savoury profile, the fragrant aroma of fried shallots and the white pepper fragrant notes.
The melon seeds and sesame seeds also provided nice texture and made it very pleasant to chew.
There were also prominent chunks of walnuts (the huge light-coloured patch in the transection just right of centre, and towards the bottom of the cake). That also greatly added to the nice range of textures and helped to provide a more substantial feel to the filling.
It wasn't very sweet at all, which I liked. And the ingredients list below explains it - apparently they didn't even add any sugar. It probably came naturally from the sweeter ingredients such as the winter melon and the tangerine peel. Or else, it's possible that it's just not listed. The shop attendant told me that they used maltose or maltitol, so maybe that was present but unlisted.
Below is the official ingredients list taken from the website of the department stall (click to enlarge). As you can tell, the list actually features other flavourful ingredients which I missed, such as tangerine peel, scallions and winter melon. All were wonderful contributions to the rich and complex medley of flavours and textures. Truly a party in the mouth, and also very natural and healthy!
Hainanese Fusion Mooncake
Next up, the so-called fusion mooncake. At first, I thought it was fusion because they used a Cantonese mooncake skin. However, the ingredients and flavour profile were completely different from the traditional Hainanese one above. The department store site claims that the filling is also Hainanese, but I couldn't corroborate that from research, as other sites on Hainanese mooncakes only mention fillings similar to the Pepper Salt one above.
This mooncake was less savoury and sweeter than the Pepper Salt one, but I felt that it still leaned savoury overall. The main difference I noticed was the absence of the pepper, and it felt nuttier. Perhaps another reason is also that the Cantonese skin was sweeter than the Hainanese crust.
Nonetheless, the overall sweetness level was still quite low, so it was still good.
The ingredients list below (click to enlarge) is shorter than the Pepper Salt one, but features more nuts such as pine nuts and almonds.
Overall, I enjoyed this quite a lot as well, and it does look a lot healthier with the long list of nuts and seeds. But I still preferred the pepper salt one because of the sheer complexity of flavours there.
"Cantonese" Style Mooncake
Actually, after some research, this is closer to the Shanghai style of mooncake, and the ingredients also support this, because the "skin" is actually a butter-based shortcrust. So it's not Hainanese at all but I'm mentioning it briefly because I enjoyed it quite a bit, especially for the low level of sweetness (this time, they listed maltitol in the ingredients list below), the buttery and crispy crust, and the smooth nuttiness of the paste filling. If you're visiting to get the traditional mooncakes, this is a good add-on to your order.
And this is the ingredients list (click to enlarge). I loved how pure the list is, with butter, egg and milk. I could tell that it was pure because it had a lovely crisp and buttery aroma upon reheating, and there was no waxy mouthfeel of margarine or shortening whatsoever.
Other comments
Overall, at around S$49 for all 6 pieces (with early bird discounts), I thought it was great value for something with so rare with so much cultural value, and that was relatively healthy and tasty compared to other similar products. The average of $8 a piece is much lower than the $15-20 of most Cantonese mooncakes these days.
Nonetheless, I would recommend it only for personal consumption, not corporate gifting, due to the packaging. The packaging of the Hainanese mooncakes (as you can see from the first image) was different from most other mooncake retailers' - it was just a plastic sleeve folded shut and held in place with adhesive, so it wasn't airtight at all. 2 of those were packed into 1 cardboard box (the purple ones in the bottom left and top right). The 2 Shanghainese mooncakes had a plastic container, but it didn't seal well and was held shut with tape. As such, I assumed they couldn't last long, so I kept them in the fridge and tried to consume them as quickly as possible.
They did offer a proper large mooncake box to put these in, but the 2 Shanghainese ones couldn't fit, so they had to sit on top of the box.
I don't think they would make impressive gifts as a result, so it's probably mainly for personal consumption or maybe just for close friends who like to try something unusual. Definitely not for corporate gifting.
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