Thursday, August 26, 2010

Rainbow Ice-cream Soda snow skin mooncake


Every packet of snow skin mooncakes I've ever read the ingredients of in asian grocery stores seems to not be vegan (often they contain yolks from salted duck eggs in the centre) so unfortunately I've never had the pleasure of eating them but arent they gorgeous! The ones pictured above have a recipe that is vegan (as long as you used vegetable shortening rather then animal fat) it can be found here: http://auntyyochana.blogspot.com/2006/09/rainbow-ice-cream-soda-snow-skin.html
So in case in you didnt know this is the chinese dessert that I took my username from a long time ago, though when I first heard of it I saw it has snowskinmooncake flavoured ice-cream featured on a asian travel blog many many years ago, how lovely. But it wasn't until I read more about them that they really interested me.

From Wikipedia: "Mooncakes are Chinese pastries traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival / Zhongqiu Festival. The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching; moon cakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy on this occasion. Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is one of the three most important Chinese festivals."

Also the legend about mooncakes with secret messages in them is really cool..

Also from Wiki : "There is a folk tale about the overthrow of Mongol rule facilitated by messages smuggled in moon cakes.
Mooncakes were used as a medium by the Ming revolutionaries in their espionage effort to secretly distribute letters in order to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China in the Yuan dynasty. The idea is said to be conceived by Zhu Yuanzhang (朱元璋) and his advisor Liu Bowen (劉伯溫), who circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and the only way to prevent it was to eat special mooncakes. This prompted the quick distribution of mooncakes, which were used to hide a secret message coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month.
Another method of hiding the message was printed in the surface of mooncakes as a simple puzzle or mosaic. In order to read the encrypted message, each of the four mooncakes packaged together must be cut into four parts each. The 16 pieces of mooncake, must then be pieced together in such a fashion that the secret messages can be read. The pieces of mooncake are then eaten to destroy the message."

To learn more about mooncakes look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake

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