This is the Mid-Autumn Festival where everybody gives everybody else Moon Cakes usually in beautiful boxes and bags. Presentation is really important here. Moon Cakes remind me a LITTLE of fig newtons. But cake on the outside is much harder and dryer and the filling might not be fruit. Sometimes it is a sweet redbean paste with an egg yolk in the middle, sometimes it is a sweet green pea filling or a rubbery fruit filling (they are my favorite if I have to eat them). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake They might be better if they were sampled with a big glass of ice cold milk, which is impossible here because all you can buy is the room temperature box milk which just doesn’t do it for me.
The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on the 15 day of the 8th lunar month, so the actual date will vary between mid September to mid October. I think it might have something to do with the harvests but I found lots of legends online – this web site had the most common 4 – just scroll down http://www.chinapage.com/Moon/moon00.html
