The Mid-Autumn Festival is a time for celebration, family, and of course, delicious mooncakes! These sweet and savory pastries are a traditional part of the festival, and they are enjoyed by people of all ages. If you’re looking to get your hands on some mooncakes this year, but don’t have a Chinese bakery nearby, don’t worry! There are plenty of places to buy mooncakes online.
Here are a few of the best places to buy mooncakes online:
- Sheng Kee Bakery: This Taiwanese bakery has been around since 1948, and they now have 11 stores in California. They offer a wide variety of mooncakes, including both traditional and modern flavors. You can order their mooncakes online or in person at one of their stores.
- Amoy: This popular bakery is known for its delicious lava custard mooncakes. They also offer a variety of other mooncake flavors, including classic white lotus paste with two egg yolks. You can order their mooncakes online or in person at one of their stores.
- Kee Wah California: This 84-year-old bakery is a Hong Kong institution with locations in California as well. They offer all their signature Cantonese-style mooncakes online with free shipping via Amazon.
- Kitsby: This Brooklyn-based bakery offers a variety of mooncake gift boxes, ranging from classic to a bit boozy. They also have a Lunar Mini Mooncake Set that includes yuzu and passion fruit–flavored treats in a collaboration with Lunar Hard Seltzer.
- Wing Wah: This popular bakery chain can be found in most Asian grocers in the United States. They offer a variety of mooncakes, including Cantonese-style white lotus paste with single or double yolk and molten custard. You can order their mooncakes online or in person at one of their stores.
- 85℃ Bakery and Cafe: This Taiwanese bakery chain is known for its pillowy-soft pork floss buns and custard doughnuts. They also offer both Cantonese- and Taiwanese-style mooncakes made fresh on the premises. You can order their mooncakes online or in person at one of their stores.
- Fay Da Bakery: This NYC bakery offers traditional mooncakes in flavors like lotus seed, red bean, and mixed nut. They also have a colorful Lava Collection that features fillings of gooey custard, orange, matcha, and durian. You can order their mooncakes online or in person at their bakery.
No matter how far from fresh mooncake — or home — you might be, these online retailers can help you get your hands on some delicious mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival.
Like all of our pastries, these are made to order. There are seven steps involved in making the filling: washing, soaking, boiling, and sifting the mung beans. One at a time, the dough is manually layered and wrapped like a croissant. Up until you take your first bite, its carefree appearance belies the amount of work involved.
When it comes to mooncakes, Sheng Kee is a classic. You can choose from dozens of styles and fillings, and they all come in gorgeously wrapped boxes that are ideal for giving as gifts to loved ones or to yourself. If you’re not a traditionalist and mooncakes aren’t your first option, Sheng Kee also has individually wrapped melon cakes, pineapple cakes, and mixed nut candies.
If there’s one bakery associated with mooncake season, it’s undoubtedly Kee-Wah Bakery. This Hong Kong bakery has been around since 1938 and churns out so many different designs of mooncakes with fillings galore. Whether you want lotus seed paste, red bean, or even chocolate, it’s likely Kee-Wah has it. You can order through the website, as well as on GoldBelly, or visit a location in California.
Customers look forward to Lady M’s mooncake collection every fall because it always comes in a stunning box with interesting flavors and fillings. This year, the box has a lantern-like shape with cut-out paper rabbit decorations on the sides and a golden rabbit embellishment on top. The lantern illuminates in stunning, color-shifting hues of purple and yellow, in typical Lady M style. Six mooncakes in the flavors of caramel coffee, Earl Grey, and purple yam, created in collaboration with Kee Wah Bakery, are housed inside the lantern. You have to purchase them as soon as they are released, almost like a sneaker drop, but you can try your luck at picking one up at locations in Chicago, Boston, DC, New York, and California. However, the box is already sold out online. If they’re still unavailable, any Mid-Autumn Festival get-together will be delighted with the new calamansi jasmine cake or the returning purple yam crepe cake.
The Mid-Autumn Festival honors the harvest season, when it is thought that a full moon will bring good fortune and abundant harvests of fall produce. It is a time for celebration all over East and Southeast Asia, with family get-togethers, moon viewing events, and of course, food—one of the most well-liked foods being the namesake mooncake. Here’s where to get mooncakes, whatever you’re looking for, before September 10th, when Mid-Autumn Festival kicks off.
When this Taiwanese bakery opened in 2008, its flaky pastries, sea salt-topped coffee, and fresh bread quickly gained popularity in the United States. The restaurant chain also offers mooncakes and gift boxes during the Mid-Autumn Festival. You can try your luck at any of the several locations in California, Texas, and Washington, even though they are currently sold out of the mooncake gift boxes online.
Mooncake 101 (月餅) Tasting & Buying Guide
FAQ
Are moon cakes legal in the US?
Are mooncakes sold year round?
Can mooncakes be shipped?
Are mooncakes an acquired taste?
Where can I buy mooncakes online?
You can buy mooncakes online with ease, directly from the source or from Amazon, where you’ll find a range of celebratory gift sets suited to a range of flavor preferences and price points. For the traditionalists and modernists alike, here’s a roundup of the best mooncakes you can buy online ahead of this year’s Mid-Autumn Festival.
Can You bake or buy mooncakes?
You can bake or buy your mooncakes — just be sure to try them! At last, fall is here! I don’t want to rush my favorite season, but September 29 marks the beginning of Mid-Autumn Festival, also referred to as the Mooncake Festival. The festivities last for a week and include lantern lighting, family gatherings, and, of course, mooncakes.
Where can I buy a nut mooncake?
Traditionalists can opt for the lotus seed, red bean, and mixed nut mooncake gift sets (with optional salted egg yolk inside, of course) at Fay Da Bakery in NYC. But if you want to add some color to your life, go for the rainbow-hued Lava Collection, which boasts fillings of gooey custard, orange, matcha, and durian.
Where to buy mooncake in Hong Kong?
While some swear by mooncakes from high-quality Hong Kong institutions like the Peninsula Hotel, Maxim’s and Wing Wah, expertly navigating all the imports is a minefield. You’ll avoid problems with mislabeling, freshness, preservatives and worse by buying from a bakery in your local Chinatown here in the United States.