The Peninsula Hong Kong · Since 1986
The Peninsula egg custard mooncake
The Peninsula Hong Kong’s mini egg custard mooncake, created in the hotel kitchen in 1986, replaced the heavy lotus paste of the tradition with a small, buttery shortcrust filled with egg custard, and started an annual queue that empties the shop by mid-September.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A pot of oolong tea, as at the festival.
Mooncakes are eaten at the Mid-Autumn Festival, traditionally dense with lotus paste and a salted duck yolk. The Peninsula’s dim sum chef Yip Wing-wah developed a smaller, lighter cake in 1986: a golden shortcrust like a Chinese egg tart, a smooth custard centre, eaten warm. It became the most copied mooncake in Asia, and the hotel sells tens of thousands in gilded boxes every August and September with a pre-order from July.
The Peninsula Boutique keeps a few in the counter through the year in some seasons; the festival boxes are the ones the city waits for.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- Pastry: 200 g flour, 100 g butter, 50 g sugar, 1 egg, 30 g custard powder
- Filling: 3 yolks, 60 g sugar, 30 g custard powder, 30 g milk powder, 100 ml coconut milk, 60 g butter, 1 tbsp condensed milk
- Egg wash
Method
- Make the filling: whisk yolks, sugar, custard powder, milk powder, coconut milk and condensed milk, cook gently with the butter until thick, chill and roll into 20 g balls.
- Make the pastry: rub butter into flour, sugar and custard powder, add the egg, chill 30 minutes.
- Wrap each custard ball in 25 g of pastry and press into a small mooncake mould for the pattern.
- Chill 20 minutes; brush lightly with egg wash.
- Bake at 200 °C for 12 minutes until golden; eat warm.
Where to taste it
The original The Peninsula egg custard mooncake
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