The Mid-Autumn season is here and mooncakes are abundant both offline and online. Though classic baked mooncakes with salted egg yolks still remain my favourite, trendier mooncakes have been popping up on social media, and they’re not just snow skin ones.
As several of them popped up on my Instagram ads, I couldn’t help but appreciate the creativity that went into these products made by small home bakers and businesses alike. So, here’s a non-exhaustive list highlighting brands that are selling their unique mooncake creations online.
1. Bake Creation
bakecreation.my or just Bake Creation, was started by Vivian less than a year ago. The baker is a former graphic designer who found joy in baking and working in the F&B scene.
For this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, Bake Creation launched an Emerald Snow Skin Mooncake line with premium tea flavours. Vivian was inspired by traditional Chinese motifs from jewellery to premium teas.
A box of 6 mooncakes comes in Assam Black Tea, Jasmine Tea, Oolong Tea, Uji Matcha, Roasted Hojicha, and Earl Grey Tea flavours made from tea powder. Costing RM89 per box, it’s only available for delivery around Klang Valley.
If you’d like to make an order, you can DM them on Instagram before September 14, and deliveries will be dispatched between September 16-21.
2. Clean Eating Grocer
After newly opening an organic grocer in Damansara Jaya, Clean Eating Grocer’s product stocks were slow-moving due to the MCO.
Seeing that their customers tended to be elderly, health and weight-conscious individuals, its team decided to use the grocer’s products to make wellness and beauty jelly mooncakes containing no sugar.
Erythritol (a plant extract sugar replacement) is used instead, so customers who are diabetic or on a keto diet can enjoy them too.
Its team told Vulcan Post that one challenge faced in creating these mooncakes was getting its flavours right. They described, “Healthy products don’t taste good honestly, especially when combining all healthy ingredients in one product.”
Rounds of trial and error were required to get their mooncakes’ flavours balanced. Ingredients used comprise organic and grade A items such as pearl peach resin, unbleached white fungus, large goji berries, and baby chrysanthemum.
At RM55 for a box of 4, its wellness jelly mooncakes boast 4 different benefits, including beauty collagen, improved eyesight, skin whitening, along with improved rest and relaxation.
You could call them at 03-7731 2388 or 017-332 5518 to pre-order a set 3 days in advance, and the wellness mooncakes are best consumed within 5 days.
3. Être Patisserie
Être Patisserie is based in Ipoh, founded by Ann in 2019 after working in multiple Michelin star restaurants overseas. To celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival, Ann wants to present her customers with croissant mooncakes that carry components of her Chinese heritage.
Plenty of trial and error was carried out by Être Patisserie’s team in balancing the flavours between French and Chinese elements. Eventually, they arrived at a flaky croissant with a thousand layers, shaped into a cube and filled with flavours like Golden Salted Egg, Oolong Lychee, and Black Sesame Azuki.
The Mooncake Croissant Gift Box costs RM158 and comes with 9 pieces. For Ipoh deliveries or pick-ups, customers can order directly on Être Patisserie’s website. They are also delivering to those in Klang Valley until September 11, and these orders can be made via WhatsApp through their number at 016-557 1111.
4. Fifty Tales x tinyminismall
As a modern Malaysian Chinese restaurant, Fifty Tales’ founder and chef Aaron Phua puts focus on nostalgia, in hopes of bringing back the traditional to the modern. Whereas tinyminismall is created by Grace Kam, who celebrates curiosity and the little moments in life.
The two collaborated and launched a range of snow skin mooncakes with sentimental flavours like corn, yam, and Milo. These flavours are chosen based on the makers’ childhood memories and local favourites.
Sold in a box of 6 at RM68, their other flavours are jackfruit, pandan, and mixed nuts. Aaron told us that the latter was a challenge to modernise as a snow skin mooncake because mixed nuts is a classic flavour in baked mooncakes that’s often less appreciated.
Hence, the duo wanted to challenge customers to embrace it as a snow skin mooncake instead, hoping it will become a more enjoyable option with a little revamp.
Aaron told Vulcan Post how their mixed nuts flavour differed. “We manage to make it a lot more moist despite having walnut, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and sesame. On top of that, we added our in-house 32-day aged duck ham and some citrus peels to lighten its flavour.”
Orders can be made 3 days in advance between September 6 to 30 by messaging Fifty Tales’ Instagram or 012-399 2697 on Whatsapp.
5. G’licious_homemade
G’licious_homemade is run by a mother-daughter duo, MeeLan and Gillian in Seremban. Fond of florals, MeeLan took a class learning how to make jelly flower cakes in Vietnam.
The home based bakery is offering jelly flower mooncakes with 4 flavours including sweet-sour plum with fruits, blue pea with longan, POKKA mango milk, and winter melon lohan longan. These are suitable for vegetarians. A box of 2 mooncakes will cost you RM33, while a box of 4 is priced at RM60.
Gillian shared that the highest number of jelly mooncakes they’ve made in a single day stands at 120 pieces per day, recorded during 2020’s Mid-Autumn Festival. G’licious_homemade also sold up to 200 boxes of their mooncakes last year.
Primarily available in Seremban, those who’d like to order from them can message G’licious_homemade’s Instagram or WhatsApp Gillian at 010-820 1136.
6. HYPEBAKERS
Truffles are a premium ingredient with versatile usage; you may find it in all sorts of dishes from main courses to desserts. HYPEBAKERS is a Malaysian business whose stand-out point is putting truffles in desserts. Its Instagram is filled with truffle cheesecakes, leveraging the MCO burnt cheesecake trend.
The brand is now offering Black Truffles Salted Egg Lava Mooncake for the Mid-Autumn season, inspired by the rarity of molten lava mooncakes in the market. It took the team over 2 months to perfect the product’s recipe, and the gift box set was only fully sorted out 2 days before launching.
For RM258, HYPEBAKERS’ gift box comes with 6 pieces of its mooncakes, with 10g of fresh truffles, gold reusable cutleries, and a personalised card. They can deliver across different states and delivery is free.
To order, you can drop them a message on Instagram. Same-day deliveries are available for orders made before 2PM. The mooncakes are only made upon orders and must be consumed within 5 days of receiving them. Meanwhile, it’s recommended to consume the fresh truffles on the same day for the best taste.
HYPEBAKERS is only taking 250 orders for its Black Truffles Salted Egg Lava Mooncake and has already sold 80 boxes (or 500 pieces) on its third day of launching the product.
7. Inside Scoop
After it was a hit for the brand during 2020’s Chinese New Year (CNY), Inside Scoop is now bringing back its popping candy ice cream mooncake for this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Choc Orange Pop Mooncake is made of Belgian dark chocolate ice cream with popping candy. Fully handmade, it takes the team a minimum of 8 hours to complete the steps for making a single mooncake.
Other than the Choc Orange Pop Mooncake, Inside Scoop also has 3 other flavours which are durian chocolate, peanut sesame, and unicorn, which is a raspberry yoghurt and blue pea flower ice cream combo.
Inside Scoop’s mooncakes are sold in a 2-piece box for RM68 or a 4-piece box for RM128. Customers can purchase them at the brand’s 27 outlets around Malaysia while stocks last.
8. Kiara Cakes
Prior to Kiara Cakes, Trincy worked as a marketing manager for almost a decade before making a leap of faith to start her own bakery in 2018.
Though she never made specific products for the Mid-Autumn Festival, she received many demands from customers. This led to her launching Cartoons Snow Skin Mooncakes this year, as she didn’t want to stick to the status quo of selling traditional mooncakes that were abundant in the market.
“Why cartoon mooncakes? Well, it’s hard for people to say no when it comes to something cute because when you see them, you will feel happy,” Trincy explained her intention to us. It is well in line with Kiara Cakes’ baked goods, which include other cute pastries such as character macarons, bunny cakes, etc.
The Cartoon Snow Skin Mooncakes cost RM98 and come in a 6-piece box, each with classic mooncake flavours including red bean, white lotus, and pandan.
Orders can be made via dropping Kiara Cakes a message on WhatsApp at 013-518 8000, Instagram, or Facebook. The bakery is only taking orders on a first-come-first-serve basis until slots are full.
9. Maria kek lapis
Maria kek lapis is a Kuching-based business creating mooncakes that might deceive passersby. On the outside, the delights are wrapped in snow skin and the more traditional baked skin. But cut them open and you’ll find colourful kek lapis (layered cakes) hidden inside.
It was created by 43-year-old Maria Ngui of Chinese and Bidayuh descent with an intention to maintain Sarawak’s identity in a Chinese traditional delicacy.
Her snow skin mooncakes come in 10 different flavours while the baked skin ones come in 12. Flavour variants include those commonly used for kek lapis, including blueberry cheese, tiramisu, and cappuccino.
Each snow skin mooncake costs RM14, and baked skin ones are RM15. A minimum order of 8 pieces is required, and comes with a postage fee of RM15. To order, you can drop them a message on Facebook or WhatsApp 012-886 3337.
10. Salt & Mould
Despite only establishing a presence on social media in 2011 on Facebook, Salt & Mould’s 34-year-old maker Kimmy has been selling her jelly mooncakes since she was 17.
Helping out her mum at the time, it was their way of earning a side income to support the family’s expenses. Before social media, the business operated under the name Homemade Jelly Mooncake since 2004, but has since rebranded to portray a modern brand image to younger audiences.
The jelly mooncakes are reminiscent of layered cakes, and that’s exactly what Kimmy’s mum was inspired by. Unlike Maria kek lapis, Salt & Mould’s products are purely made out of agar-agar powder with flavours such as yam, mango, red bean, cendol gula Melaka, and dragonfruit.
Salt & Mould’s jelly mooncakes are sold at RM78 for an Experiential Set consisting of 8 pieces with all its available flavours. Customers can order a set by dropping them a message on Facebook or Instagram, and the jellies are best consumed within 3 days.
11. Tatami Bakery
Tatami Bakery was started by founder Jooan Chee in 2020 after her online retail business took a hit due to the MCO. Fond of owls, she decided to make baked mooncakes shaped like the nocturnal creature for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Being new to handcrafting these mooncakes last year, Jooan went through plenty of sleepless nights shaping the pastries to sell. This year, she’s roped in her family members to help make the mooncakes, with a new addition of crab-shaped ones too.
For RM79, a box of Tatami Bakery’s mooncakes come with 6 pieces in the flavours of pandan lotus, green tea, and durian. Deliveries are free within the Klang Valley.
To order, you can WhatsApp them at 016-643 3803, or message them on Instagram. Pre-orders at least 2 days in advance are appreciated, Jooan shared.
12. Teatime_byThien
Before starting their home based bakery, Teatime_byThien amidst the lockdown, sisters Ashley and Lihwen were a beauty consultant and a quantity surveyor respectively.
Their business focused on selling desserts was launched in August 2020, just in time for the mooncake festival where jelly mooncakes were also their first product.
It was the Thien sisters’ way of breaking away from the crowded market with mooncakes that were too sweet for their liking. Their solution: healthy jelly mooncakes decorated with floral designs, much like G’licious_homemade’s.
Teatime_byThien’s Flower Series Jelly Mooncakes come in 3 flavours, Jujube Osmanthus Peach Gum, Gold Foil Rose Lychee, Golden Foil Butterfly Pea Flower Longan. They are best eaten within 3 days to maintain their freshness.
Sold in 2 different sets, they both have 3 pieces of mooncakes and cost either RM88 or RM138, depending on the packaging and extra offerings inside the box. Deliveries are free and customers can also pick up their orders from the business’s Seri Kembangan location.
Orders will be closing on September 15, and customers can message the brand on Instagram to get their box.
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Some may argue that such departures from the traditional would disqualify many of these entries as “real” mooncakes, but you can’t deny that they each have their own unique charm.
This makes them interesting gifts for friends and family, particularly during the pandemic when many of us have been unable to pamper ourselves or our loved ones.
At the end of the day, all these brands are also proudly Malaysian, so supporting such creativity in the local F&B scene would encourage them to keep coming up with more exciting products for the benefit of customers.
- You can read about more Malaysian F&B brands we’ve covered here.
Featured Image Credit: HYPEBAKERS / Clean Eating Grocer