Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, is the second most important holiday in Taiwan (after Chinese New Year).

Traditionally, it's a time to gather with your family and give thanks for the harvest. Today, people tend to barbecue with their families, look at the full moon, and eat moon cakes. 

So why is it called the Moon Festival? Well, one story is that if Hou Yi and his wife, Chang'e. One day ten suns rose into the sky at the same time. There was too much light and heat, burning plants and causing disaster for all of the people.  Hou Yi, who was an excellent shooter, managed to shoot nine of the suns down, saving the land and people. He became a hero and was loved by all the people and later became king. But he let all the power go to his head and soon became a horrible leader. He wanted to live forever so asked for an immortality potion. His wife, Chang'e took the potion to protect the people from having her husband as a king forever. She flew to the moon where she still lives to this day. They say she is still up there and on clear nights you can see her face in the moon (and all this time we thought it was a man in the moon!).

Then there's the moon cakes, the delicious moon cakes. The story behind the moon cakes is that the Han Chinese were planning an uprising against the ruling Mongols. They convinced the government they needed to give all the Han Chinese a moon cake to protect them from disease. Inside each moon cake was a note that told people to prepare for an uprising on Mid-Autumn Day.

Ok, so now you're all caught up with the history let's get to the moon cakes! 

I went to a moon cake making class last weekend. We were taught about the history if the holiday and then got to make our very own moon cakes! 

Here are the supplies:

First, the process was modeled for us.

 Then, we got to make our own!

While they cooked we learned a Moon Festival song and got to enjoy this amazing and adorable concert!

And here is the final product!

I lucked out and got to use the cool red paint!

The one I made was curry flavored and delicious. 

A few of my student's mothers were nice enough to give me in a box of moon cakes, too. 

These adorable rabbit moon cakes were filled with a fruit paste. The rabbit is from a Japanese folklore about a rabbit who lives on the moon. The cakes were from Japan, too!

These are yummy, too! They're more like cake-cookies without a filling. The left side are red bean flavored and the right are plain, probably milk flavored.

And then my boss gave us each one of these cool round moon cakes. It's so cute and delicious. 

So much moon cake!

<3