Traditional recipes for mooncakes still preferred in bakery

Busy preparation: Poay Lam supervising his son Zhan Peng while he swiped the half-baked mooncakes with eggwash before popping them into the oven again.

JOHOR BARU: A two-decade old bakery here shows that old is gold as customers keep coming back for its traditional mixed nuts mooncakes made with ham.

Siang Yong cake shop owner Ong Poay Lam, 66, who has been operating his shop for the past 26 years, insists on sticking to his traditional recipes to make the mooncakes to give his customers the authentic taste.

He said that nowadays there were many mooncakes being made with new and unconventional flavours like chocolate, green tea, jackfruit and jelly mooncakes but he insists on sticking to the methods used by our forefathers.

“The mixed nuts mooncakes are popular especially among my older customers because it brings a nostalgic feeling and reminds them of the good old days when they ate similar mooncakes as children.

“I still use lard as part of my recipe because I want to keep the taste as traditional as possible,” he said when met at his shop along Jalan Pendekar 1, Taman Ungku Tun Aminah here yesterday.

He said that commercial bakeries produce mixed nuts mooncakes as well but they lose the authentic taste when lard and ham are omitted from the recipe.

The father-of-three explained that the mooncake was packed with a variety of nuts like walnut and almond as well as sunflower and sesame seeds that goes well with a hot pot of Chinese tea.

He said that the mixed nuts with ham mooncake, priced at RM13.50 each, was one of his best-sellers at his shop besides favourites like lotus paste and Shanghai mooncakes.

He oversees and handles the operations at his shop with the help of 10 workers working from 6am to 6pm daily to cater to customers’ demand for handmade mooncakes.

Ong, who began learning making traditional Chinese biscuits like ‘tau sar piah’ from his neighbour who owned a bakery when he was 10 years old, said that he hoped to pass on his business to this youngest and only son Zhan Peng one day.

“I have began teaching him the trade since last year and luckily he is willing to learn, otherwise I would have nobody to take over my business,” he said, adding that he hoped the shop would be a family legacy.

He added that his shop, which makes Chinese biscuits on normal days, concentrates on making more than 30 types of mooncakes during a month building up to the mid-autumn festival.