Susan Blumberg-Kason

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You are here: Home / Featured / Mooncakes and then some

Mooncakes and then some

September 13, 2014 By Susan Blumberg-Kason 3 Comments

Today I took my kids to the Chicago Peninsula to pick up our mooncake order. It was the first time I’ve been in the general vicinity of the Pen since the Mid-Autumn Festival last week. But the Pen was taking orders for pick-up through tomorrow, so we got there just in time.

pen mooncake box

Just before we left for the Pen with my mom, I decided to book a reservation for lunch at Shanghai Terrace, the Pen’s Chinese restaurant. As it turned out, my mom and I couldn’t keep up with the kids. The dumplings shown here are  vegetable (lower bamboo steamer), prawn and pea shoot (upper left), and lobster and chicken with black truffle (upper right).

shanghai terrace dim sum

The dim sum was gone in the matter of minutes, so we ordered three more types. The kids were up for dessert, so we ordered this refreshing Cantonese dish. It’s a mango and tapioca soup with coconut cream, seasonal fruit, and banana cake.

pen dessert

And now for the mooncakes! We waited until we returned home to open them. I ordered a box with two mooncakes and six sachets of three types of tea.

inside mooncake box

The kids shared the first mooncake.

Peninsula mooncake

I ate some of the second mooncake. The outside tasted like shortbread. And the inside was a sweet egg custard, a nice (and preferable) take on the traditional egg yolk mooncake filling.

Open mooncake

Although these mooncakes are smaller than the ones sold in Asian groceries, I far preferred the Pen’s and will probably go for the box of four next year! Until then, I’ll enjoy the tea.

If you celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, what was your highlight from the holiday?

Filed Under: Featured Tagged With: Asian Food and Drinks, Raising Multi-Cultural Kids

Comments

  1. Sveta says

    September 19, 2014 at 3:21 am

    *Jealous* Hehe I wanted to do moon cake for Mid-Autumn Festival, but it was too expensive for just six of them 🙁 Few years back I went to a show for Mid-Autumn Festival and went kind of nuts over moon cakes haha. I’m craving one…hmm my birthday is coming up soon 😉 on October 5th, evil thoughts 😀

    Reply
  2. R Zhao says

    September 16, 2014 at 9:56 pm

    I spent the holiday with my mother-in-law’s boyfriend’s family (while my husband was at work). I had to do this last Chinese New Year and it was really awkward for me, but this time around I felt more comfortable–that was the highlight for me!

    Reply
  3. Jocelyn Eikenburg says

    September 14, 2014 at 9:35 am

    Wow, every time you post about dining at the Pen, it always looks so enchanting and glamorous! Hope I’ll have the chance one of these days to try out their food and hospitality.

    The highlight of my Mid-Autumn? Probably that amazing vegan dinner we had on the day of the holiday was definitely it. (in doing so, we also discovered one incredible restaruant in our neighborhood!)

    Reply

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About Me

Susan Blumberg-Kason spent her childhood in suburban Chicago dreaming of the neon street signs and double-decker buses of Hong Kong. As soon as she was old enough, she moved there to study. Her memoir, Good Chinese Wife (Sourcebooks, 2014), recounts her years in a Chinese family as a wife, daughter-in-law, and mother.

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