Celebrate The Mid-Autumn Festival With The Peninsula Bangkok's Famous Mooncakes
Sure, egg custard mooncakes are a seasonal Chinese tradition to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. And you'd be right in saying The Peninsula Hong Kong is where the secret recipe originated for these mildly sweet treats. But judging by the popularity of the three million egg custard mooncakes that have been baked in the kitchen at The Peninsula Bangkok since when they were introduced in 2006, you'd think it's always been a Thai favorite. If those three million mooncakes were piled vertically, they'd reach 815 times higher than the five-star hotel.
When The Peninsula Bangkok started baking egg custard mooncakes, the hotel introduced an entirely new flavor for locals. Traditionally, Thai mooncakes incorporated dried fruits including tropical durian. Chinese cuisine executive chef Jackie Ho and his team at Mei Jiang forego the fruit, instead meticulously handcrafting each baked good using ingredients like organic eggs as dictated by chef Yip Wing Wah, The Peninsula Hotels' dim sum ambassador. Yip is The Peninsula Hong Kong's chef who adapted this recipe from one passed down for generations, and The Peninsula Bangkok inherited the tradition via its on-property Cantonese restaurant, Mei Jiang.
Only during the Mid-Autumn Festival — which this year falls on October 4 — The Peninsula Bangkok's mooncakes are packaged as cherished gifts to share with family and friends. They're sold in boxes of eight for good luck, because the Chinese word for "eight" sounds like words meaning "prosperity" and "good fortune." The mooncakes are presented in an elegant red octagonal gift box with a lotus flower motif, the symbol of the Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Peninsula Bangkok's eight-piece egg custard mooncake gift set is priced at 890 bhat (approximately $27) and can be purchased from August 10 to October 4, 2017, at The Peninsula Bangkok boutique, and at Peninsula pop-up stores in the Siam Paragon and EmQuartier shopping malls. If you're not in the neighborhood, online orders up to 20 boxes can be made via diningpbk@peninsula.com or www.peninsula.com/bangkok on August 21-23, 2017. And, of course, the recipe is also baked and sold at The Peninsula Hong Kong, where it was created.