Motormouth From Ipoh – Asian Food & Travel Blog

How Beautiful Are They? Don’t this make you feel a little bit home sick (if you are oversea)?

The annual homecoming for the Mooncake Festival or more righteously known as Mid-Autumn Festival has always borne fruit in terms of discovering or rediscovering one-of-a-kind mooncake experience. The sheer fact that Ipoh is a treasure trove of nostalgic delights packed into small parcels in the nooks and corners of the laidback city makes it all so worthwhile to come back once a year; and surprise myself with new finds.

And no, I don’t fancy the commercial brands that are charging an arm and a leg for an ultra-sweetened, mass-manufactured, machine-made mooncake.

Call me old school, staunch/stubborn egoist or plain Motormouth, if you will. I love my mooncakes that come in irregular shapes; the paste not sweetened to an artificially insulin-deprived level, and packaging without the fancy golden thread or sparkling and glossy that justifies the MYR15++ per piece charge.

Okay, maybe sometimes. But when I have a choice, I revisit places like Ching Han Guan, Sin Eng Heong, Hoong Tho or Ming Yue Confectionery. Sounds alien to you? Read on. And find out about the delectable BBQ Meat Mooncake (also known as bak kwa or chu yuk korn). Read the rest of this entry »

Ching Han Guan’s one-and-only Teochew Walnut Mooncake; a much healthier option with considerably less sweet

In the blink of an eye, the long Raya-Merdeka break has come to an end. Can’t deny that I am still suffering the post-holiday blues, though mine has ended prematurely last Friday when I managed to drag this carcass of a soulless body to work.

But hey, not all’s gloomy though. We still have Malaysia Day on the 16th this month (a most alluring 3 days weekend again, though I’ll be ‘working’ on that Friday ….), and Deepavali’s right around the corner.

Okay, so it’s more than a month’s away, but still …. there’s hope in wishful thinking ya?

If you have visited the malls lately, there has been an increase in festive decorations; a multitude of confused elements combining Hari Raya, Merdeka and Mid-Autumn Festival all into one.

If you have read last year’s post on the same theme, you would have noticed that I favour the more traditional mooncakes (by that, I don’t mean even the perfectly shaped, glossy lotus paste with salted egg yolk) than the modernized version with funky flavours like durian, cheese and chocolate.

And where else but this 62 year-old establishment named Ching Han Guan; for the best of traditional mooncakes? Read the rest of this entry »