KUCHING: The Mid-Autumn Festival or known as the Mooncake Festival, a traditional festival celebrated in Chinese culture, is being celebrated worldwide today.
On this day, friends and families would gather and have dinner and mooncake would normally be served.
The mooncake often comes in round shape, and in Chinese culture, roundness symbolises completeness and togetherness.
There are traditional mooncakes and modern mooncakes nowadays, which come in different sizes and flavours.
Interestingly, there is also mooncake made from jelly and indeed it is much healthier.
This halal jelly mooncake is made by 30-year-old Nurainin Mirhassan from Kuching.
“We produced halal jelly mooncakes which are made from a halal certified seaweed jelly powder.
“The available flavours are mango, lychee, coconut, honeydew, strawberry, lychee rose and blackcurrant,” she said.
She added that there are also a few fruits and fillings to choose from such as lychee, longan, orange, pineapple, nata de coco and fruit cocktail.
“The flower design is customizable and sugar level is adjustable to meet the customer’s preference. Hence, it is definitely a healthy and low calorie choice,” she said.
She said her jelly mooncakes are sold at RM80 per box and it consists of four jelly mooncakes.
Nurainin, who is a full-time design engineer in civil engineering, has made jelly cakes, a passion of hers into a part time career. She has started making jelly cakes in 2019.
“We just started introducing our mooncake edition with a special box this year and more than a dozen mooncakes are sold so far in Kuching and we hope to sell more in the future.
“For our normal cakes, a few of them were safely brought to travel to other districts in Sarawak and also West Malaysia,” she said.
Despite being a Muslim, she said she finds the mooncake festival a beautiful occasion.
“To the Chinese, the round shape of mooncakes symbolises family unity. While a full moon symbolises prosperity, happiness and reunion for the whole family.
“Just like the story behind the mooncake, where it was created as a messenger that managed to raise the people on a local scale, symbolising a spiritual feeling.
“During the Mid-Autumn Festival, people and families come together to eat mooncakes and they are gifted to one another as an expression of love and best wishes,” she said.
The mooncake, she said, is not just a food, but the harmony it brings is the beauty of it.
“Nowadays, there are many halal mooncakes sold in the local market. We can see many races and religions come together celebrating the mooncake festival to taste mooncakes of different flavours.
“To me, the mooncake festival is not just a celebration of unity and harmony, but also diversity,” she said.
Meanwhile, those who like to know about Nurainin’s jelly cake creation or mooncake creation can WhatsApp her at 014-6836823 or visit the Instagram profile at @jellyandpetals.
