[1] Why are cookies like these lemon bars called cookies instead of cake? Because they’re finger food, eaten without a fork (photo © King Arthur Baking).

[2] Similarly, brownies are also bar cookies (photo © Palmer House).

[3] Some of America’s favorite cookies—chocolate chip, oatmeal, and peanut butter—are drop cookies (photo © American Heritage Chocolate).

[4] Zeppole, an example of fried cookies, are balls of yeast dough. Like brownies and bars, they’re considered cookies rather than pastry because they are finger food (photo © The Nibble).

[5] Springerle cookie dough rolled out alongside baked cookies (photo © Hello Aesthe | Pexels).

What does one do on National Homemade Cookie Day, October 1st?

One revisits the 10 different styles of cookies and decides which one to bake.

Then, because it’s also International Coffee Day, we invite the neighbors for coffee and cookies.

Below:

> The 10 basic styles of cookies.

> America’s favorite cookies.

> America’s top cookie brands.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The history of cookies.

> Different varieties of cookies: a photo glossary.

> The differences between butter cookies, shortbread, and sugar cookies.

> The year’s 44 cookie holidays.

> Christmas cookie recipes.

 
 
1. THE 10 BASIC STYLES OF COOKIES

The different styles of cookies are classified by the way the dough is handled.

There’s also a “faux” cookie, the no-bake cookie, which is made without dough.

Bar Cookies. Here, batter or other ingredients are poured or pressed into a rectangular pan (sometimes in multiple layers), then baked and cut into individual-sized squares that have a dense cake-like consistency. Brownies and bars are examples of bar cookies. In the U.K., bar cookies are known as “tray bakes.”

Drop Cookies.
A relatively soft dough is dropped by the spoonful onto the baking sheet. During baking, the mounds of dough spread and flatten. Chocolate chip cookies, oatmeal cookies and coconut macaroons are examples of drop cookies.

Filled Cookies. The cookie dough is stuffed with fruit, jam or other confection. They can be like thumbprint cookies (photo below); or the fruit/jam can be totally enclosed in the dough. Other types of filled cookies include Linzer cookies and other sandwich cookies filled with jam, often with a small cutout on top, and stroopwafels.
 

[6] Jam-filled thumbprints are a popular filled cookie (photo © Taste of Home).
 
Fried Cookies. These are fried dough, often dusted with powdered sugar. Examples include the Jewish/Polish kruściki, and the Italian zeppole. Fried dough is becoming increasingly popular, with chocolate chip cookie dough, oatmeal cookie dough and others all headed to the fryer.

Molded Cookies. Made from stiff dough, these cookies are shaped by hand, and embossed with a mold or with a stamp, including a Springerle rolling pin, before baking. Wreath cookies are an example.

No-Bake Cookies. These are “faux” cookies, a kind of candy-cookie hybrid. No-bake cookies are made with a cooked stovetop mixture that functions like a dough before it sets. Examples include haystack cookies, no-bake coconut cookies, peanut butter cornflake cookies, and the iconic Rice Krispies Treats.

Pressed Cookies. Made from a soft dough that is extruded from a cookie press (cookie gun) or piped from a pastry bag into various decorative shapes. Spritz cookies and French macarons are examples.

Refrigerator Cookies or Ice Box Cookies. Made from a stiff dough that is refrigerated in logs until it becomes hard. It’s then sliced into rounds and baked. Examples include pinwheels and shortbread.

Rolled Cookies (Cutout Cookies). These cookies are made from a stiffer dough that’s chilled, rolled out, and cut into shapes with a cookie cutter, knife or pastry wheel. Gingerbread men are an example (or any cookie made with a cookie cutter).

Sandwich Cookies. Sandwich cookies are rolled or pressed cookies that are assembled as a sandwich with a sweet filling. Buttercream, ganache, jam, marshmallow cream and peanut butter cream are popular. Oreos—perhaps the most famous sandwich cookie in the world—and whoopie pies are examples. French macarons are perhaps the most elegant example: two almond-flour cookies filled with a layer of ganache. S’mores—graham crackers with marshmallows and melted chocolate bar—may be the most fun.
 

[7] Whoopie pies are sandwich cookies with cake-like halves (photo © Taste of Home).
 

Customer polls will vary, but these cookies typically rank among America’s favorite cookie flavors.

1. Chocolate chip, widely considered the undisputed number-one favorite across the country.
2. Peanut butter, a classic that consistently lands near the top.
3. Sugar cookie, beloved for its simplicity and versatility for decorating, during holidays as well as everyday baking.
4. Oatmeal raisin, a chewy, traditional favorite.
5. Peanut butter blossom, the iconic peanut butter cookie topped with a chocolate kiss.
6. Double chocolate, a chocolate cookie with chocolate chips or chunks.
7. White chocolate macadamia nut, a flavor popularized in the 1980s by Mrs. Fields.
8. No-bake cookies, made on the stovetop instead of in the oven.
9. Molasses-ginger, warmly spiced favorites that are popular during cooler months.
10. Macaroon, a coconut-based flourless cookie that substitutes shredded coconut and egg whites for flour.

 
 
3. AMERICA’S TOP COOKIE BRANDS

We include these because someone asked. Mass-market cookie brands taste nothing like delicious homemade cookies. Yet, America buys some $15.8 billion worth each year.

Mass-market cookies use inexpensive, shelf-stable fats, high-fructose corn syrup and/or corn syrup solids, artificial flavors and colors, and chemical preservatives.

Home-baked cookies rely on real dairy, whole pantry staples, and are chemical-free.

1. Oreo, America’s (and the world’s) best-seller, a chocolate sandwich cookie known for its classic cream filling and endless flavor variations.
2. Chips Ahoy! are America’s top-selling chocolate chip cookies.
3. Girl Scout Cookies, while seasonal, sell enough Thin Mints and Samoas to take third place.
4. Pillsbury refrigerated break-and-bake dough and soft-baked packaged cookies.
5. Pepperidge Farm, considered a premium brand, with many fans of its Milano chocolate-filled sandwich cookies.
6. Keebler, famous for nostalgic favorites like Fudge Stripes and Chips Deluxe—and the Keebler Elves, of course.
7. Nestlé, a staple for ready-to-bake refrigerated cookie dough and baking essentials like morsels.
8. Nilla, classic vanilla wafers that are a key ingredient in some banana pudding recipes.
9. Royal Dansk, a classic butter cookie imported from Denmark. Packaged in a recognizable blue tin, they use real butter and contain no artificial colors or preservatives.
10. Famous Amos, bite-sized, crunchy chocolate chip cookies, mostly sold in individual snack packs.

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For more than 80 years, you could purchase only three types of chocolate bars: dark chocolate (launched in 1847), milk chocolate (debuted in 1875), and white chocolate (arrived in 1930).

Few people realize that in 2012, a fourth chocolate joined the group. Valrhona introduced blonde chocolate (which it trademarked under the name Dulcey®), discovered in a kitchen accident.

And just five years later, in 2017, Barry Callebaut unveiled the fifth type, ruby chocolate (photo #6), made from specially selected and processed ruby cacao beans. The first major consumer product using it—a ruby KitKat—followed in 2018.

Blonde and ruby are not “flavored” chocolates. They are distinct formulations, just as milk was added to dark chocolate to create milk chocolate, and the cacao solids were left out of the blend to create white chocolate.

We’ve previously extolled the virtues of ruby chocolate. In celebration of International Chocolate Day, September 13th, we introduce you to our favorite blonde.

Below:

> What is blonde chocolate?

> Why haven’t you heard of it?

> The history of blonde chocolate.

> The science of blonde chocolate.

> Where to find it.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The history of chocolate.

> The different types of chocolate: a photo glossary.

> The world’s top chocolate houses.

> The year’s 69 chocolate holidays.

 
 
1. WHAT IS BLONDE CHOCOLATE?

Blonde chocolate, is caramelized white chocolate. It was trademarked as Dulcey® by its creator Valrhona, after the French word “dulce,” meaning sweet. Other producers call their products by the generic names blonde/blond chocolate, caramelized white chocolate, and sometimes, gold chocolate.

Barry Callebaut has trademarked the name Caramel Aura® for their blonde chocolate. Valrhona also makes a second type of blonde chocolate called Orelys®† for the professional market.

Unlike standard white chocolate, which is a blend of cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar, blonde chocolate undergoes the Maillard* reaction to develop its caramel notes—the same process that turns cream into caramel candy.

Under gentle, prolonged heat, the natural milk proteins and sugars react to produce a rich blonde-tan hue. The reaction fundamentally transforms the flavor into a profile similar to that of dulce de leche (itself a Maillard reaction).

A blonde chocolate bar is creamy and melt-in-your-mouth smooth: a velvety texture, a warm golden hue, and a symphony of flavors.

The melt-in-your-mouth feature is the result of 35% cocoa butter—not to be confused with 35% cacao‡ of many milk chocolate bars. Like white chocolate, it contains cocoa butter but no cocoa solids; its distinctive blond color and toasted, caramelized flavor come from the processing of its milk and sugar components.

The initial notes are buttery and toasty, evoking butterscotch and caramel and the essence of freshly baked shortbread.
 

[9] Consumers can buy bars of Valrhona Dulcey; in fact, chocolate lovers owe it to themselves to try it (photo © The Nibble).
 
 
2. WHY YOU HAVEN’T HEARD OF BLONDE CHOCOLATE

Blonde chocolate has had a significant impact—but primarily in professional pastry, not as a mass-market candy.

It has not become a consumer category in the way milk, dark, white, or even ruby chocolate (briefly) have.

Yet, Dulcey became Valrhona’s most successful chocolate launch and one of its five leading sellers (note that the bulk of Valrhona sales are to professionals—pastry chefs and chocolatiers).

Why is that?

It originated as a professional couverture ingredient. Valrhona marketed Dulcey to pastry chefs: for creams, ganache, glazes, ice creams, mousses, and molded pieces—not as a grab-and-go candy bar. So far, its influence can be found in restaurant desserts, bakeries, and luxury confections. Some artisan chocolatiers use it, and you can find blonde/Dulcey chocolate bars.

It does not look dramatically new. Blonde/Dulcey chocolate is pale gold or tan. On a shelf, it can be mistaken for white chocolate, caramel chocolate, butterscotch, or a milk-chocolate variant.

Ruby chocolate had an immediate advantage: Its naturally bright pink color is visually striking and easy to communicate on a package or in a photograph.

Its flavor is familiar, but its identity is confusing. The flavor—caramelized milk, which delivers notes of dulce de leche and shortbread—is appealing. But consumers can easily interpret it as salted caramel or toffee, rather than recognize a distinct chocolate type.

It has no clear mass-market flagship product. Most consumers learn a chocolate type through an inexpensive, widely distributed, strongly branded item: a Hershey bar, a KitKat, an M&M’s product, and so on. Ruby received that kind of attention through Nestlé’s ruby KitKat launch.

Dulcey has been sold in bars and baking pieces (discs/feves), but its principal home has remained specialty retail and pastry. Even Valrhona’s U.S. store presents it chiefly as a premium chocolate and baking ingredient.

It competes with a crowded caramel universe. Caramel, salted caramel, dulce de leche, toffee, brown butter, cookie butter, and butterscotch already give shoppers choices in essentially the same flavor territory.

Blonde chocolate is technically more useful to pastry chefs than liquid caramel or caramel fillings, but that functional advantage matters far more in the kitchen than in the candy aisle.

In the U.S., the dominant consumer preferences are already entrenched. According to a National Confectioners Association survey, milk chocolate was preferred by 40% of consumers, dark by 28%, and white by 7%. “Blonde” was not even presented as a separate mainstream choice.

The same survey found caramel to have the broadest appeal among added flavors. In other words, consumers may like what blonde/Dulcey tastes like while choosing it under the familiar word caramel.

In fact, some companies market it to consumers as caramel white chocolate or caramelized white chocolate.
 
 
3. THE HISTORY OF BLONDE CHOCOLATE

Blonde chocolate was a happy kitchen accident at one of the world’s most prestigious chocolate houses.

It was discovered in 2004 by Frédéric Bau (photo #8), the renowned pastry chef and creative director of the French luxury chocolatier Valrhona.

While leading a demonstration at l’École Valrhona—the company’s professional pastry school in Tain-l’Hermitage, the Rhône Valley headquarters of the chocolate company—Bau inadvertently left white chocolate in a hot bain-marie for longer than intended.

Instead of burning or curdling, the chocolate slowly caramelized over approximately ten hours, turning a soft golden hue and releasing warm aromas of toasted shortbread and roasted milk.

Recognizing that this mishap had culinary brilliance, Bau and his team spent eight years perfecting the formulation, texture, and industrialization of the process until Valrhona officially introduced the product to pastry professionals and consumers in 2012 under the trade name Dulcey.
 

[1] Indulge in the creamy, caramelized texture of Valrhona Blond Dulcey 35% cocoa butter chocolate bar (photo © The Nibble).

[2] Laderach Frischoggi blonde chocolate with almonds (photo © The Nibble).

[3] Pastry chefs and chocolatiers buy their couverture in blocks like these, or in discs in the next photo (photo © Valrhona).

[4] Discs, also called fèves (French for beans) or wafers. Flat discs are also called buttons, callets, or pistoles (photo © Valrhona).

[5] A bowl of Valrhona Dulcey crunchy pearls, meant for decorations or inclusions, but you can eat them from the bowl (photo © The Nibble).

[6] You can find dark, milk, white, and ruby chocolate bars in the U.S. It’s less easy to find blonde chocolate bars (photo of blocks of couverture © Barry Callebaut).

[7] Dr. Louis Camille Maillard, who in 1912 first described the chemical reaction now known as the Maillard reaction (photo Public Domain).

[8] Frédéric Bau, creative director of Valrhona and creator of blonde chocolate (photo © Stéphane de Bourgies | Valrhona).

Unlike standard white chocolate, which relies on a simple blend of cocoa butter, milk solids, and sugar, blonde chocolate undergoes caramelization via the Maillard reaction*.

• Under gentle, prolonged heat, the natural milk proteins and sugars react to produce a rich blonde-tan hue and fundamentally transform the milk flavor.
• The resulting profile features warm notes of toasted biscuit, shortbread, dulce de leche, salted butter, and toasted nuts, rounded out by a distinct pinch of salt that tempers the sweetness.
• Per Valrhona, it’s creamy and melt-in-your-mouth smooth, carrying the comfort of butterscotch without the sharp cloying stickiness of boiled caramel candies.

 
 
What Blonde Chocolate Brings to the Table

Before the introduction of blonde chocolate, confectioners and pastry chefs faced a noticeable flavor gap between sweet, dairy-forward white chocolate and deeper cacao-bean chocolates.

Standard white chocolate is frequently criticized for being flat, excessively sugary, and lacking complexity (but check out our favorite white chocolate bars, which are not).

Caramel and dulce de leche can be tricky to work into delicate pastry mediums because of moisture, stickiness, or instability at room temperature. Blonde chocolate solved these culinary challenges by bringing three essential qualities to the table:

• Nuance Without Cocoa Solids. Blonde delivers deep, roasted, nutty complexity while retaining a completely cocoa-solid-free profile, keeping the color light and allowing delicate companion flavors to shine through without competing against the assertive bitterness or tannins of dark chocolate.
• Structural Utility in Pastry. Because it behaves with the same exact temper, snap, and fluid fat structure as premium couverture chocolate, chefs can use it seamlessly for truffles, ganaches, glazes, mousses, and enrobing without having to juggle the high water content of liquid caramel sauces. (See What Is Couverture Chocolate.)
• An Exceptional Flavor Bridge. Blonde’s savory, buttery undertones bridge beautifully with contrasting ingredients that struggle next to ordinary white chocolate, making it an extraordinary pairing partner for tart fruits such as passion fruit, raspberries, and apricots, as well as for roasted coffee, espresso, sea salt, toasted pecans, whiskey, and Bourbon.

Today, blonde chocolate has expanded far beyond Valrhona’s original couverture to become a recognized chocolate style across artisan chocolatiers worldwide, offering dessert lovers a sophisticated alternative that is warm, savory-sweet, and thoroughly distinctive.

Get a bar!
 

[11] Chocolate chip cookies made with Callebaut Caramel Aura baking chips (photo © Barry Callebaut).
 
 
5. WHERE TO FIND BLONDE CHOCOLATE

Here are a few places for starters. If you’re going to try blonde chocolate, start at the top. Less expensive bars won’t give you the best experience (with the exception of Trader Joe’s).

In alphabetical order:

• The Chocolate Season: Blonde Bar With Cacao Nibs (photo below).
• Läderach: Blonde Caramel Tablet and Blond Almond Frischoggi.
• Trader Joe’s private label blonde chocolate bar is made by an Italian producer. Find it on Amazon; at Trader Joe’s it’s just $2.99.
• Valrhona Dulcey Chocolate Bar: Valrhona, Amazon, and Worldwide Chocolate.

 

[11] A blonde chocolate bar with cacao nibs (photo © The Chocolate Season).
 
 

†Valrhona Dulcey® vs. Valrhona Orelys®. Valrhona describes Dulcey as buttery and caramelized (think toasted shortbread, warm milk caramel, and a very smooth creamy finish), while Orelys’s muscovado-driven sweetness yields a molasses-like depth, deeper color and muscovado’s characteristic light licorice notes. For pastry, Dulcey pairs with fruits, nuts, vanilla, and straightforward caramel desserts; while Orelys’ darker sugar profile was created to stand out with coffee, warm spices, banana, citrus, or berry flavors. See the different types of sugar.

‡The better milk and dark chocolate bars state their percentages of cacao. A top milk chocolate bar can be 45% or higher; dark chocolate can range up to 100% (no sugar is added). Connoisseur-quality bars are typically 70% cacao, the percentage which shows the finest bars to their best advantage. Here’s more about the percentage of cacao.
 
 

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[1] A plate of red bean mooncakes (photo © Omnivore’s Cookbook).

[2] Traditional mooncakes with a pot of Chinese tea (photo © In Pursuit Of Tea).

[3] A stack of mooncakes with both traditional and modern designs (stack adapted from Vogue).

[4] A traditional mooncake—lotus seed paste and duck egg yolk—from Hong Kong’s most famous mooncake brand, Mei Xim, pronounced MAY-shin (photo © Yami).

The Moon Festival, also known as the Mid-Autumn Festival and Mooncake Festival, is one of China’s most traditional holidays.

It occurs on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, a time-tracking system that matches both the monthly phases of the moon and the yearly seasonal cycle of the sun.

This year, the festival falls on September 25th in the Gregorian calendar*.

Much like Thanksgiving in the U.S., it’s a time for family reunions, giving thanks for the autumn harvest, and gathering to admire the bright full moon.

Below:

> What are mooncakes?

> Mooncake gift-giving.

> The world of mooncake flavors.

> Have a mooncake tea party.

> Where to buy mooncakes.

> Mooncake recipes.

> The history of mooncakes.

Elsewhere on The Nibble:

> The year’s 15 Chinese food holidays.
 
 
1. WHAT ARE MOONCAKES?

Mooncakes are a traditional Chinese pastry eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. As you can see from the photos:

• Shape: Traditional mooncakes can be round or square. The thin, soft crust is baked to a golden brown.
• Made in special molds, the top has raised designs: the Chinese characters for good luck, flower shapes, patterns, etc.
• Fillings: Traditional fillings are lotus seed paste, red bean paste, or black sesame paste. A counterpoint to the sweet paste, a salted duck egg yolk is often placed in the middle to look like a full moon. Mixed nuts, seeds, or even pork can be added.
• Contemporary versions fill mooncakes with chocolate, fruit jellies, or ice cream, and pastry chefs show off their skills in the design.
• Size: Traditional mooncakes are rich and heavy: dense, sweet, and oily. The standard size measures approximately 4 inches (10 cm) across and 1¼ to 1½ inches (3–4 cm) thick. Mini or bite-sized versions typically measure 1.75 to 2 inches (4.5 to 5 cm) in diameter.
• That means they’re high in calories and fact. But this is a once-a-year celebration: Enjoy it.

 
How To Eat Mooncakes

• Traditionally they’re paired with hot green tea to balance the intense sweetness.
• Tradition dictates cutting the cake into small wedges—often quarters or eighths—to share with family and friends.
• Mini sizes are now made so that you simply cut them in half and share (or not).

 
 
2. GIVING MOONCAKES AS GIFTS

Giving someone a mooncake means wishing them health, happiness, completeness, and a happy family reunion.

You can begin giving mooncakes two to four weeks before the Mid-Autumn Festival. A typical schedule:

• 2 to 4 weeks before: Give mooncakes to business clients, bosses, and extended family members.
• 1 to 2 weeks before: Give mooncakes to close friends and immediate family, so they can eat them during the actual celebration.
• You can still gift them for up to a week after the festival.

Traditional baked mooncakes may keep for several weeks, depending on their packaging and ingredients. The newer style, fresh snowskin mooncakes, spoil quickly and require refrigeration.

Give perishable types closer to the actual holiday date.
 
 

The classic Cantonese-style mooncake usually has a thin, golden-brown baked crust, decorative mold pattern, and a dense sweet filling. Each region has its favorites. Traditional fillings include:

• Black sesame: Used alone or combined with fillings such as glutinous rice (mochi) or salted duck egg yolk.
• Five-kernel/five-nut filling (wǔrén): A textured mix of nuts and seeds, commonly including walnuts, sesame, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds, peanuts, or almonds. Recipes differ by region.
• Jujube-date paste: Dark, fruity, and lightly tangy.
• Lotus-seed paste: Often considered the most luxurious classic filling, particularly white lotus paste.
• Mung-bean paste: Smooth, mild, and sweet.
• Red bean paste: Earthier and more bean-forward than lotus paste.
• Salted duck egg yolk: Typically set inside lotus or bean paste; its round golden form represents the full moon. One or two yolks are common, and some elaborate versions use more.
• Savory fillings: Particularly in regional styles: minced pork, ham, dried shrimp, mushrooms, and other savory ingredients.

What’s with the egg yolks?

The yolk tempers the sweetness and gives the pastry a sweet-salty contrast. The best-known Cantonese combination is white lotus paste with salted egg yolk.
 
Regional Variations

Long before modern bakers put a 21st-century spin on them, mooncakes varied greatly across China. Beyond lotus paste and egg yolks, even the “classic” mooncake flavors have varied, with bean-based, floral, fruit-adjacent, nutty, and savory styles. Examples:

• Cantonese: Lotus paste, red bean, egg yolk, five-kernel, mixed savory-sweet fillings.
• Suzhou: Flaky, layered pastry with sweet fillings but also savory minced pork and ham versions.
• Teochew: Often flaky; taro/yam, mung bean, and salted egg yolk are common.
• Yunnan: Can feature rose, nuts, or local ingredients.
• Fujian: Often larger and more rustic, with nuts, sesame, jujube, candied winter melon, and lard-rich pastry.
• Shanghai/Jiangnan: Savory fresh-pork mooncakes are a major seasonal specialty.

 

[7] Purple sweet potato is one of the more contemporary flavors. Here it’s filled with blueberry ice cream (photo © Suncore Foods).
 
The Modern Flavor Diaspora

As mooncake traditions moved beyond China, they evolved in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and overseas Chinese communities. Bakers used familiar local ingredients to appeal to younger generations and customers outside of the community.

First came tropical and other Asian-influenced flavors:

• Durian: A major Southeast Asian adaptation, especially popular in Malaysia and Singapore.
• Fruit pastes: Lychee, melon, mango, and other translucent fruit pastes turned up in contemporary chilled styles.
• Pandan: The “vanilla of Southeast Asia” is, not surprisingly common in Southeast Asian mooncakes. Grassy and vanilla-like, pandan is often paired with lotus, mung bean, coconut, or egg yolk.
• Pineapple: Especially linked to Taiwanese baking traditions, including the popular Taiwanese pineapple cake. In a mooncake, it provides tartness that cuts through the richness; it can be paired with salted egg yolk.
• Taro/yam: Now widespread, if not purely “new.”

 

[8] Matcha snowskin mooncakes filled with red bean paste. Here’s the recipe (photo © Cooking Therapy).
 
The Creation Of Snowskin Mooncakes

The biggest leap forward was the emergence of snowskin mooncakes in Hong Kong in the 20th century.

Unlike the traditional baked wheat pastry, snowskin mooncakes are not baked. They cover the filling with a soft, chewy glutinous-rice exterior (like mochi) and are served chilled.

These lighter, contemporary pastries were especially well-suited to flavors that would feel unusual in an old-style lotus-paste cake:

• Chocolate
• Coffee
• Cream cheese
• Custard
• Ice cream
• Lychee
• Mango
• Matcha
• Molten lava
• Passionfruit
• Strawberry

The lighter style also begat colorful skins: pale pink, green, yellow, purple, blue, and other shades, made with natural ingredients or food colorings. (Matcha, for example, can tint a skin green, while fruit and vegetable ingredients can create pink, purple, or yellow tones.)

Are you ready to have a Mid-Autumn Festival tea party? (We just created the idea; it’s not a thing in Asian communities.)
 

[9] A tray of mooncake molds with different designs (photo © Constellation Inspiration).
 
 
4. HAVE A MOONCAKE TEA PARTY

Get different flavors of mooncakes—including traditional and modern varieties. Put on the tea kettle, pop the bubbly. And decorate.

• String colorful paper lanterns. In many Mid-Autumn Festival celebrations, lanterns brighten the night and symbolize the moon’s glow..
• Eat mooncakes. Sharing round pastries symbolizes wholeness and family unity.
• Gaze at the moon. Gather outdoors to admire the beauty of the full moon, sip tea, and share festive foods.

If weather obscures the sky and prevents moon-gazing, the celebration simply shifts indoors. The cultural essence of the holiday remains unchanged.

Beverages

Because traditional mooncakes are rich, dense, and sweet, the best drinks will have acidity, herbal lightness, or crisp effervescence to cleanse the palate.

Non-Alcoholic Drinks

• Apple Cider with Ginger: Warm or chilled spiced apple cider lightly infused with fresh ginger.
• Green tea or tisane (herbal tea): hot definitely; iced optional.
• Sparkling yuzu or pomelo/grapefruit soda.

Alcoholic Options

• Dry Gewürztraminer, such as an Alsatian: floral and lychee-scented.
• Sparkling wine.

 
Party Soundtrack

The playlist should balance gentle, reflective evening tones with warm, celebratory energy.

Popular Selections

• “Dancing in the Moonlight,” King Harvest
• “Fly Me to the Moon,” Frank Sinatra
• “Harvest Moon,” Neil Young
• “Moondance,” Van Morrison
• “Moon Song,” Phoebe Bridgers
• “Pink Moon,” Nick Drake
• “The Whole of the Moon,” The Waterboys

 
Classical Selections

• “Clair de Lune,” Claude Debussy
• “Moonlight Sonata (Piano Sonata No. 14),” Ludwig van Beethoven
• “Pierrot Lunaire, Op. 21,” Arnold Schoenberg
• “Song to the Moon” (aria from “Rusalka”), Antonín Dvořák
• “Vaga luna, che inargenti (Lovely moon, who sheds silver light, arietta),” Vincenzo Bellini

 

[10] These mooncakes from Lady M bridge the traditional and the contemporary, in pistachio, yuzu cheesecake and red bean (photo © Lady M).
 
 
5. WHERE TO BUY MOONCAKES

A starter list:

• Ăn Xôi: traditional mooncakes with Vietnamese-influenced flavors.
• Kee Wah Bakery: lotus seed/egg yolk, red bean, date paste, mixed nuts with ham.
• Lady Wong, elegant packaging.
• Mariebelle: lotus seed and pineapple flavors in contemporary designs.
• Lady M.: Traditional shapes with modern flavors (photo #10, above).
• Weee: This online grocer specializing in Asian foods, has a broad selection.
• Also check at Costco and Walmart.

 

[11] A Vietnamese-style mooncake with festive accoutrements (photo © Mooncakes by Ăn Xôi).
 
 
6. MOONCAKE RECIPES

Prefer to bake rather than buy? Mooncakes are not very difficult to make, but the process has many steps and takes patience.

• Red bean and other flavors from Omnivore’s Cookbook (photo #6).
• An assortment of recipes from different bloggers.
• Matcha red bean mooncakes (photo #8).
• Mini mooncakes.

 
 
7. THE HISTORY OF MOONCAKES

A mooncake—yuèbǐng—literally “moon cake” or “moon pastry”—is a traditional food of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

The connection between round cakes, moon worship, and the autumn harvest is ancient, but the precise origin of the modern mooncake is difficult to pin to one date or dynasty. What we do know:

• Early roots: Autumn moon offerings were part of longstanding Chinese ritual. Round cakes became associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival and its themes of harvest and reunion.
• Tang dynasty (618–907): Many accounts place recognizable festival mooncakes in this period, although origin stories vary and should be treated as tradition rather than a fully documented single invention.
• Yuan-to-Ming transition (1368): A popular legend says rebels hid messages inside mooncakes to coordinate an uprising against the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty. It’s an enduring story, but historians generally treat it as folklore rather than settled fact.
• Regional development: Over centuries, different regions developed distinct pastries—especially the glossy, molded Cantonese mooncake; the flaky Suzhou mooncake; and varieties from Beijing, Yunnan, Chaoshan/Teochew, Fujian, and elsewhere.
• Modern gift culture: In the 20th century, mooncakes increasingly became premium seasonal gifts. Their packaging, branded collections, and creative flavors have become almost as significant commercially as the cakes themselves.

 
 
The Mid-Autumn Festival spread through Chinese communities across East and Southeast Asia, so mooncakes developed local identities in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, and beyond. Asian Inspirations gives a useful overview of that broader regional evolution.

For the origin story—the legend of the moon goddess and the rabbit—see “The Romantic Myth of Moon Fest.”
 

[12] Taiwanese mooncakes and a pot of tea (photo © The Foundry Bakery).
 

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*The 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar falls between September 7th and October 8th in the Gregorian calendar.
 

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