Homemade mooncakes emerge as new choice for Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam

Homemade mooncakes emerge as new choice for Mid-Autumn Festival in Vietnam

Selling homemade mooncakes during the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival has become a popular trend this year, thanks to affordable prices and diverse flavors.

Mooncakes are often presented during the mid-autumn season to relatives, friends, and colleagues as a token of love, care, and gratitude.

This year, homemade sweets, made by small-scale producers and households using traditional wooden molds, are replacing mooncakes made by big companies.

Benefits of homemade mooncakes include affordable prices, diverse flavors, and fresh ingredients.

Apart from traditional “banh nuong” (baked mooncake) and “banh deo” (sticky rice mooncake), homemade mooncakes are also shaped as cute animals, or other nice shapes.

Fillings also include new ingredients, ranging from expensive ones such as fish fins to fruit, jelly, and ice cream, in addition to the traditional mung bean paste, salted eggs, sausage, lotus seeds, and jam.

Besides strange flavors such as corn, chocolate, durian, and banana, customers can also order custom flavors.

A number of housewives have chosen to buy molds and make their own homemade mooncakes to ensure food hygiene and suit the tastes of not only their family and friends, but also their customers.

Dang Mai Hanh, who lives in Ho Chi Minh City’s District 10, said that she has sold homemade mooncakes for years. “People only need to order via my Facebook and Twitter sites,” she shared.

According to Hanh, the biggest problem is food safety, as homemade mooncakes have no preservatives or vacuum seal, so customers must consume them within five to seven days.

The baker also emphad that besides assuring high quality, the flavors of homemade sweets should be unique and strange to attract buyers.

According to bakery owners, the cost of raw materials for the cakes are around VND19,000 (US$0.9) to VND21,000 ($0.99) per batch, but due to the cost of boxes and transportation, the price of cakes often reaches VND40,000 ($1.89) or more.

While explaining why homemade mooncakes are so attractive, bakers said customers tend to dislike traditional mooncakes produced by big companies using industrial methods as they are too sweet or too big.

Hanh has sold around 2,100 homemade cakes, calling this year’s outcome a “successful result.”

Vietnam celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival on Monday, which is the 15th day of the 8th month in the Vietnamese calendar.

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