Making Mooncakes in Bangkok

MAKING MOONCAKES IN BANGKOK

The Thai-Chinese  community is very large in Bangkok creating great demand for this special item especially during the Mid-Autumn Festival.

When I arrived in Bangkok, I worked with the incredible team at the Bangkok Mandarin Oriental. These talented chefs taught me about the traditions and process of making the different types of mooncakes. I learned how to roll the dough in a special way, then put it inside what is known as a mooncake bat, the name of a form maker that forms the cake, and imprints it with a custom form for each hotel design and logo.  Then we would carefully weigh the filling and stuff it inside then properly close the pastry.  Part of this process involves banging the wooden mold/bat to ensure it is properly packed and even more importantly,  imprinted correctly. This was quite an experience and seeing our hotel produce 14,000 of these in a short amount of time was impressive.

The festival traditionally gets people to appreciate the moon and watch it, a nice tradition and the mooncakes are a fundamental part of the whole thing. they usually get gifted among friends and family and are a must-bring when arriving at a family gathering. This festival is one of the four biggest on the Chinese calendar.

The cakes are round and quite uniform in size about 10 centimeters in diameter with a 2-3 millimeter crust on all sides, wrapping and containing a very rich, thick filling. The cakes are usually cut into wedges and consumed with tea. There are more different recipes than there are days in a year and now the mooncake tradition extends to all of Asia and is starting to take hold in other parts of the world. Give them a try sometime.