B: Mid-autumn Festival is coming, an occasion that most children and many adults like me, look forward to. This festival reminds me of my childhood, when I attended colorful lantern parades with my friends and then enjoyed special treats of fruits and moon cakes.

A: The Mid-autumn Festival of my childhood was associated with the flavor of traditional baked moon cakes and sticky rice moon cakes. Nowadays, the variety of moon cakes and moon cake boxes is much greater than it was back then.

B: The crust is basically the same but there are now many different kinds of fillings, thanks to the creativity of chefs.

A: Every mid-autumn season, the Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel introduces special moon cakes with new flavors. This year, in addition to the traditional mix of black sesame, green bean, dried apricot, and salted eggs, the hotel is bringing out new flavors - durian, lotus, longan, and red berry tea.

B: We invited Le Thi Huyen Trang, who is in charge of making moon cakes this year for the Metropole, to tell us how the moon cakes are made.

Trang: For this year’s Mid-autumn Festival, apart from familiar ingredients such as lotus seeds, black sesame, and green bean, which are typical of Vietnam, we introduce two new flavors of moon cakes: durian and lotus, and longan and red berry tea.

Durians are a specialty of the Mekong River Delta region in Vietnam and we want to bring this special flavor to many foreign customers. Because Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi is specialized in French-style which inclines to fruit flavors, we add blueberries, and blackberries to lotus seed, so that customers can enjoy both the autumn fragrance of lotus seed and fruits.

(Photo: The Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi hotel)

A: Making moon cakes is a time-consuming process. Moon cakes use lots of ingredients and preparations must begin several days in advance. For new flavors, the technique must be different, right?

Trang: For durian filling, it is necessary to choose ripe durian fruit, then take out the durian flesh. Green bean is steamed. Mix it with sugar to make green bean paste. Finally, add the durian flesh. Adding durian flesh is the final step and it should be cooked for a short period of time to keep the flavor of the durian. The filling is prepared 2 days before making the cakes.

B: What about combining tea, a typical Vietnamese ingredient, with imported fruits such as blueberries, blackberries, cherries?

Trang: Making moon cakes with lotus seed and tea is more complicated. First, the tea is mixed with the fruits. The tea mix will be then cooked with lotus seed. For this kind of filling, dry ingredients like dried fruits, longan are prepared first. 2 or 3 days before we bake the cakes, we mix the dry ingredients with lotus seed  paste, tea and fruits to make the filling.

A: Over the years, chefs have modified the fillings to create new kinds of moon cakes. The crust is still made the traditional way from flour, golden syrup, and water. With the new flavors of durian, and lotus, longan, and tea, do you have to make any adjustment to the crust to keep the right texture?

Trang: With the traditional method, it took 4 to 5 days for the moon cakes’ crust to be soft and ready to serve. But now, we make a little change. The golden syrup is cooked in advance. It takes half a day for the syrup to condense. The syrup is prepared several days before making the cakes, which makes the cakes’ crust softer while still maintaining its fresh flavor.

B: Having a bite of sweet moon cakes with a cup of tea and watching the full moon is still the tradition of Vietnamese people. Why not try these much sought after new flavors of moon cakes of Sofitel Legend Metropole Hanoi? Enjoy your Mid-autumn festival by your loved ones. Good bye. See you next time.