A myriad of modern mooncake fillings: from the sweetness of red velvet to the fragrant aroma of tiramisu.

In a small kitchen on Van Quan Street in Ha Dong, the reporter was offered a piece of mooncake by Ms. Thu Huyen (29 years old - owner of a bakery in Hanoi). The mooncake had a bright red outer shell and an ivory-white filling. Taking a bite, the reporter was surprised by its subtly sweet and slightly rich flavor. This mooncake was completely different from the familiar ones.

Modern mooncakes are competing with traditional ones.

In our country's traditional Mid-Autumn Festival feast, there are two mooncakes, one baked to a golden crisp and the other soft and white, delicately nestled beside handfuls of fragrant green rice flakes, a few rough-textured bananas dipped in quail egg yolk, and some bright red, plump persimmons, as soft and juicy as the lips of a young girl in her prime. Adding a pot of lotus tea and some ripe green pomelos to that feast makes it truly complete.

However, with today's fast-paced lifestyle, not everyone has the time to prepare an elaborate mooncake platter, and family members rarely gather together to enjoy the moon as they used to. Mooncakes have also adapted to this bustling trend, transforming into various fillings to make them easier to eat and more accessible to younger generations.

Several types of modern pastry fillings

Modern mooncakes are not limited to just a few familiar fillings like green tea and chestnut, but can also be much more innovative. Talking to Thu Huyen, the owner of a bakery specializing in modern mooncakes, Travellive reporters learned about many unique and distinctive varieties.

Reportedly, the original mooncake that Thu Huyen let the reporter taste was called "red velvet" - named after a type of pastry originating from Europe, with a bright red cocoa cake base and a cream cheese filling. These ingredients also contribute to the mooncake's flavor, making it very similar to traditional red velvet mooncakes.

Besides the red velvet cake, Huyen brought out a large tray with many different types of cakes. Some had brown crusts speckled with black dots, which Huyen called milk tea mooncakes; some had solid black crusts; and others were green… they all looked incredibly beautiful and unique.

Thu Huyen shared: "I like drinking bubble tea, eating Oreo cookies, red velvet cake, and tiramisu, so I combined them into mooncakes. Why can't we have red velvet and Oreo drinks but not mooncakes with the same fillings?"

Green tea cake flavor

The cake has a slightly dull green outer layer. According to the owner, because they use high-quality Taiwanese matcha powder that contains no artificial coloring, the crust will turn slightly yellow when heated, rather than remaining a vibrant green.

Inside the cake is a mung bean filling mixed with matcha powder to enhance the tea flavor. Taking a bite, the cake has a characteristic mild bitterness and a refreshing aroma of young tea leaves. As it reaches the back of the throat, the cake changes to a subtly sweet taste, and a delicate fragrance spreads throughout the mouth.

Tiramisu flavor

A traditional tiramisu is made from a soft ladyfinger sponge cake topped with a mixture of Kahlua liqueur and Italian coffee, and topped with a sweet and sour mascarpone cream. It would be difficult to recreate that original flavor in a mooncake version.

However, with the cake that the Travellive reporter tasted, she was completely surprised because the aroma of this tiramisu cake was exactly the same as the tiramisu she ate in high-end restaurants and hotels.

The cake had a very soft crust, a subtle aroma of coffee and liqueur, and a touch of sweetness from the cream cheese filling. When these two elements blended together, the reporter's taste buds were transported back to the experience of tasting tiramisu from the past.

What do young people think about modern mooncake fillings?

On a sunny autumn afternoon, with the sun still shining brightly and golden like honey, a Travellive reporter chatted with Bui Ngoc Khoi (29 years old - a Hanoi resident, currently a food photographer and owner of the "I Want to Eat Deliciously" group) about the trend of modernized mooncakes.

He shared his perspective: “For my grandparents, the traditional mooncake was the sticky rice cake with mung bean filling. For my parents, the traditional mooncake was the commercially produced mooncake, consisting of a pair of baked and sticky rice cakes, like the fish-shaped sticky rice cake. But for my grandchildren, the mooncake must have green tea filling to be delicious. I think whether it's traditional or innovative isn't that important, because after all, it's still a gift that expresses love and affection during the Mid-Autumn Festival.”

However, not all modern mooncake varieties have been well-received or generated positive reactions. Continuing the conversation with Mr. Khoi, the reporter learned more about the modern mooncake market, which, while colorful and innovative, is also quite chaotic and haphazard:

“I think we’re learning a lot from China when it comes to innovative cakes; whatever new cake they have, we have it the next season. Besides that, there are some bakeries that deliberately try to shock with bizarre flavors like ‘sticky rice with fried onions,’ ‘KitKat,’ or even British cheese filling. I don’t really support such excessive creativity. I think creativity should also consider the aesthetic aspects of cuisine as well as cultural appropriateness,” Mr. Khoi emphasized.

According to Travellive, the emergence of innovative mooncakes not only competes with traditional mooncakes, but it has also timely "saved" the mooncake market, which was gradually falling into a rut due to the familiarity and boredom of a few traditional fillings, in the face of the storm of modern, trendy lifestyles today.

Ha Chuu