Old-skool moon cake

September 24th, 2007 by lynnylchan under My Life

I went to Sheng Siong to pick up groceries, and right before the cashier counter, I encountered a holdback from my childhood - the rice-flour mooncake! This isn’t your usual brown baked mooncake, nor is it a fancy new snowskin. It’s just… a cake.

No really, it says “Kuih Bulan” right there on the label - that’s Malay for “moon cake”. The ingredients are listed as rice flour, sugar, malt extract and glucose. I know it’s too large in diameter, and flat, and doesn’t seem to have any filling, but it’s supposed to represent the moon, and it’s a cake of flour. And it has a rabbit on it, and everyone knows that old Chinese folktale about the bunny up there on the moon. I rest my case.

I remember eating it as a kid, and there’s something about its texture that I haven’t found replicated elsewhere. It can be easily broken, but it’s not really brittle - you sort of have to pull it apart if you want a piece. And it’s also slightly compressible, like foam. It’s slightly chewy at first, but becomes a gooey paste. Also it’s not too sweet. I could just slowly nibble away at it all day. For reference, the whole piece is slightly more than 6 inches in diameter, so that’s quite a lot of nibbling I’d be doing.

Oh, and does anyone remember the biscuits? I used to call them “gong zai beang” (lit: “picture biscuits”) because they came in all sorts of funny shapes, like fish and pigs and a pistol. A sample can be seen here. They have the same red bean or lotus paste filling, and sometimes a round black seed for an eye.

Ah, childhood. At the most unexpected times, it comes back with its sugar rush and gaudy colours to put a contented, gormless smile on my face.