Mooncakes are an indispensable food during the Vietnamese Mid-Autumn Festival. This traditional cake has been with the Mid-Autumn Festival for nearly 1000 years.

Mooncakes are associated with the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Vietnamese festival of family reunion. On the Mid-Autumn Festival, every family will prepare a tray of offerings mainly consisting of fruits and mooncakes for the whole family to gather together. Traditional mooncakes include two types: sticky rice cakes and baked cakes. Square sticky rice cakes are usually white and made from glutinous rice flour. Traditional square baked cakes are usually mixed cakes (10 flavors) and will have a golden brown color because they are made from wheat flour and then baked under high temperatures. Today, you will have many flavors of mooncakes to choose from. There are countless colors and shapes of mooncakes. In addition to round and square mooncakes, you can find interesting mooncakes shaped like rabbits, lanterns, fish, and peonies… Traditional mooncake shops often use ingredients such as lotus seeds, coconut meat, black sesame, nuts, and young rice to make large mooncakes for everyone to share. More creative bakers will offer mooncakes with egg, coffee, chocolate, jelly, strawberry, and even durian fillings to their customers. The best mooncakes are always made with fresh ingredients and no preservatives. They are best eaten within a week or two.
Giving mooncakes to family members, colleagues, and businesses has become a favorite custom during the Mid-Autumn Festival. As gifts, the presentation of mooncakes is as important as the taste. Every year, bakeries create new shapes, colors and flavors to please the market, and design beautiful boxes to display mooncakes as expensive gift sets. In the weeks leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, you will see mooncake stalls popping up all over the streets of Vietnam. Top hotels launch artistic mooncake sets with carefully considered ideas for businesses to gift to their customers. Two weeks before the holiday, which always falls on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, is the ideal time to send mooncakes to people on your list.
If you are planning to give mooncakes to someone, with many mooncake shops around, ask the seller about the cake flavors to suit the taste and class of the person receiving the cake. If you are not sure about the shop near you, look for five-star hotels such as Metropole, Intercontinental, Sheraton…. They always launch beautiful high-end mooncake sets every year with unique and attractive flavors. Meanwhile, famous traditional Vietnamese mooncake brands with points of sale across the country such as Huu Nghi, Kinh Do… will have a variety of products from popular to high-end for you to choose from. Of course, for the above businesses, traditional mooncakes are always the main product during the Mid-Autumn Festival. A famous Vietnamese craft village specializing in mooncakes is Xuan Dinh village (Hanoi). With 200 years of age, Xuan Dinh confectionery village supplies products nationwide with traditional flavors. In addition to products produced by large enterprises, each city has famous mooncake makers, you can easily find information about these private establishments via the internet or ask the Vietnamese people around you.

Enjoying mooncakes is also very simple, but can also be elaborate depending on your space and time. Just simply open the cake box, break into small pieces and enjoy with a cup of tea to feel the flavor of the cake.