Mooncake flavours get more exotic

Mooncakes, a common corporate gift during the eighth lunar month*, are available in a wide range of flavours this year. Most hotels will create new flavours of mooncakes, while restaurants also get into the act with mooncake selections on their premises as well as at booths at various malls. Halal mooncakes are even available from brands such as Prima Deli.  

Early bird offers, credit card discounts and promotions for large corporate orders can also provide more value per dollar, but different offers are applicable at different locations, even for the same brand.

With sales (and deliveries) ramping up towards the mid-autumn festival, businesses are advised to put in their bulk orders in August, and to plan to buy in person well before the festival itself. The Goodwood Park's deadline for bulk orders, for example, on 29 August at 12 noon, while on-site sales end on 8 September.

Chefs experiment with new flavours both for the casing and the filling, with fruit-based flavours being the most common.

The Goodwood Park Hotel is offering mooncakes till 8 September 2014 at The Deli in the hotel lobby. Its new flavour is the Calamansi, Kumquat and Sour Plum snowskin mooncake, which contains bits of sour plum and sugar-poached kumquat, while the tropical fruit snowskin mooncakes Mango with Pomelo and Cempedak flavours are back by popular demand.

Goodwood Park is famous in Singapore for its durian mooncakes, particularly its signature D24 and ‘Mao Shan Wang’ Durian flavours. A new durian alternative debuts this year, made from the premium Black Thorn durian. According to the hotel this mooncake has "an intense bitter-sweet flavour" and comes in a gold-dusted black charcoal snowskin. 

This year’s collection of mooncakes at the Grand Hyatt Singapore includes four traditional and nine snowskin mooncake flavours. According to the hotel, all mooncakes are 100% preservative-free and do not contain pork or lard. Its two new flavours do contain alcohol, however.

The mooncakes are available for sale at the shop at mezza9 from 4 August to 8 September and also at the lobby shop on the ground level from 11 August to 8 September. 

Source: Marriott Singapore website.

The Marriott Singapore is selling mooncakes at the Hotel Forecourt Stall from 1 August to 8 September 2014. The hotel has introduced two new snowskin mooncakes: Italian Roast Coffee Paste with Vanilla Bean Custard, and Coconut Paste with Jhambiri Lemon Curd.

The Raffles Hotel supports online orders for mooncakes till 31 August, with a 20% discount for orders made this way. It will have two new flavours, including a snowskin Tropical Tango Mooncake (冰皮果味”探戈”月饼, pictured below in the centre), where a combination of mango, passion fruit and pineapple in a white chocolate shell acts as the 'yolk' of the mooncake. 

Source: Raffles Hotel website.

The hotel's mooncake shop will be open till 8 September at the North Bridge Road entrance. 

Sheraton Towers Singapore has an online order form up on its website and will offer mooncakes at its Li Bai Cantonese Restaurant, and at a booth at the hotel lobby from 6 August to 8 September. 

Three lotus seed paste-based mooncake flavours will debut this year: a lotus seed paste mooncake with cranberries and hazelnuts, a mini** white lotus seed paste mooncake with lemon mandarin, and a mini green tea lotus seed paste mooncake with rosehip truffle.

Source: Sheraton Towers website.

Mooncake promotions are also available in the malls, where shoppers can taste-test samples before they buy. Many of the well-known hotels and restaurants will be represented, including the Grand Hyatt, Goodwood Park and Sheraton Towers:

Ang Mo Kio Hub: 25 August to 7 September
Bugis Junction: 25 August to 7 September
Century Square: 22 August to 8 September
Change Alley: 11 August to 8 September, weekdays only
Chevron House: 11 August to 8 September, weekdays only

Compass Point: 25 August to 7 September
Junction 8: 25 August to 7 September
Jurong Point: 18 August to 7 September
Lot One: 25 August to 7 September
Nex: 25 August to 7 September
Parkway Parade: 25 August to 7 September
Takashimaya B2 Square (Ngee Ann City): 7 August to 8 September
VivoCity Level 1 Atrium: 19 August to 8 September

*The mid-autumn festival will be celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month, which falls on September 8 in 2014.

**Mini mooncakes are about a third the size of traditional mooncakes.