Eight To Try: Sydney-Made Mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival 2024

Traditionally in Asian cultures, Mid-Autumn Festival is a time when people reunite with friends and family to celebrate the full moon, light lanterns and share mooncakes, the intricate Asian cakes that are back in town for the year.

The festival started over 2000 years ago in ancient China as a way to give thanks for the end of the harvest season and the bounty it produced. It was also thought to coincide with the full moon.

Around the world today, it’s celebrated by many Asian communities, with different cultures following different traditions. Similarly, the festive pastries have taken diverse forms over the years: sweet or savoury, baked or chilled.

This year, the festival starts on Tuesday September 17. And while it’s not a public holiday in Australia like it is in China, it’s still a celebratory time for Asian Australians – and a time to share or gift mooncakes.

It was once difficult to find mooncakes in Sydney that weren’t imported, but now there is the choice of an abundance of Sydney-made options – so we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Here’s where to get your local mooncake fix this Mid-Autumn Festival.

You’ll find that the traditional Chinese mooncakes – with lotus and egg yolk filling – are still the most common. Golden-brown, the sweet outer pastry is usually made from flour, water, oil or lard, and golden syrup.

Emperor’s Garden, Haymarket
This Haymarket institution might be known for its piping-hot custard puffs, but come Moon Festival the queues are for mooncakes, too. Here you’ll find handmade mooncakes baked the old-school way. Fillings are traditional, such as lotus, five kernels (mixed nuts), and egg yolk with Chinese ham.

XOPP, Haymarket
The upmarket sibling restaurant of the legendary Golden Century, XOPP serves standout Cantonese fare – so it’s no surprise the team’s adding mooncakes to the menu. Choose from salted egg custard, sweet red bean or lily bulb, a flavour inspired by the popular dessert soup. If you’re not dining, you can grab your picks from the pop-up stall outside The Exchange for the duration of the festival.

Dulcet Cafe, CBD
The desert-making duo behind the now-closed Dulcet Cafe and Sweets – Vivienne Li and Juno Zhu – opened their Japanese-style bakery in Kinokuniya back in 2021. Specialising in Japanese shokupan, crepe and chiffon cakes, they’re taking a creative approach to their mooncake selection. There are classics like lotus paste and salted egg yolk, plus golden custard and osmanthus pine nut flavours. The duo also have new Japanese-inspired flavours: a green-hued jasmine grape, black sesame walnut, and pineapple coconut with golden egg custard.

Sweet Lu, Haymarket, Newtown and Chatswood
Freshly baked and handmade in Sydney, Sweet Lu’s mooncakes come in stunning designs and beautiful packaging. Want to impress the in-laws? Gift them an intricate lotus-shaped mooncake presented in a lit-up lantern-shaped box from the boutique patisserie.

Made with duck yolk (sourced from Melbourne), milk, butter and flour, the pastry is “more of a soft biscuit than a cake”. The real crowd-pleaser is the signature: a lava custard mooncake. While tradition dictates that whole eggs are used, Sweet Lu exclusively uses the salted yolk to create its creamy “custard lava” centre.

There’s also a Penfolds red wine and cranberry combo, lava chocolate, and oolong tea.

Made with a generous amount of lard, Shanghainese mooncakes boast a flakier outer crust than their Cantonese counterparts.

Lilong, Darling Square and Rhodes
The Chinese restaurant from the Taste of Shanghai Group released its crispy, honey-gold puff pastry mooncakes with both sweet or savoury fillings. Veer left and try the pork and abalone.

These delicate mooncakes have grown in popularity over the years. The mochi-like wrapper – made with glutinous rice flour – is chilled rather than baked. For this reason, they’re often hailed as the healthier (but no less delicious) alternative to their buttery equivalents.

Black Star Pastry, all locations
Made using sticky rice, Black Star dropped its “crystal snow-skin” mooncake collection in four flavours: strawberry and rose, yuzu and mango, black sesame cheesecake, and chocolate and hojicha. Each is inspired by one of the viral bakery’s cakes, and the pillowy mooncakes are plump with a cream-cheese filling, and stamped with one of its cartoon mascots. They’re available to pre-order and in limited quantities from all Sydney stores and pop-ups in Broadway and Burwood.

Arguably the least-known variety, momoyama-skin mooncakes are made using white bean paste, egg yolk, butter, milk and cream. Often the preferred choice for coloured designs as their skin can hold the food dye, they tend to have a nuttier flavour than traditional mooncakes.

Ommi’s Food, online
Because Ommi’s Food mooncakes are made fresh with no preservatives, they have a shelf life of less than a month. But with innovative Taiwanese flavours, we can’t guarantee they’ll last that long anyway.

The online Taiwanese grocer is run by chef Omar Hsu (who’s also the chef-owner behind Ommi Don, on Broadway and in Redfern). He’s released two series of mooncakes this season; one features Cantonese-style flavours but the other is a creative spin.

There’s a red bean “cheesy mochi” mooncake with a stretchy mozzarella-like pull when you halve it, another with taro imported from Taiwan, and a black sesame with a lava centre. Plus, Hsu’s riff on bubble tea with a boba-stuffed mooncake.

Mooncakes come in an array of flavours, and also forms – like this fun take from an Aussie chocolatier.

Koko Black, all stores
No flaky pastry or delicate skin, here you’ll find chocolate encasing fun fillings – available wrapped in a lantern gift box or individually. Bite into a shell of matcha white chocolate to reveal a red bean ganache with matcha shortbread, or try the dark option filled with a creamy, five-spice-infused milk chocolate ganache and mango jelly. The almond caramel and cherry pistachio are excellent too.

While we love the twists on mooncake this season, you can still grab traditional overseas mooncake brands – look for Wing Wah, Mei Xin and Sunny Hills from international supermarkets (like Thai Kee IGA) and local Asian grocers.

Market City and Darling Square are hosting street festivals during the mooncake season, too. Browse food stalls, immerse yourself in the culture and catch live performances.