For this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival, the Cantonese restaurant Golden Leaf, located inside the Conrad Hong Kong hotel, has introduced a mooncake flavored with gin.
Even while mooncakes with spirits in them have been made previously, Golden Leaf, the Cantonese restaurant of Conrad Hong Kong, has pioneered the gin-infused mooncake.
The boozy mooncake is a partnership with Two Moons Distillery, a regional gin distillery based in Hong Kong, and it has gin added to the Creamed Egg Yolk flavor. The egg custard inside the mooncake is infused with Calamansi Gin, giving the sweet and smooth pastry a zesty scent and a faint gin flavor.
The restaurant also serves traditional mooncake flavors including White Lotus Seed Paste with Egg Yolk and Mini Creamed Egg Yolk throughout the event, which this year takes place on September 10. To celebrate the event, which has a history dating back more than 3,000 years, Chinese citizens will have a three-day holiday. The Chinese believe that on this day, which falls in the middle of harvest season in the autumn, the moon is at its brightest and largest size.
Mooncake making and sharing is one of the festival’s iconic customs. A round form represents “completeness” and “reunion” in Chinese culture. During the festival week, eating and sharing round mooncakes with family members symbolizes families coming together.
