清真笑爺 - Halal Mooncake Launching Soon!

There might have lots of mooncake brands in Hong Kong, but none offers Halal certified mooncake. There is one Halal pastry shop, namely 清真笑爺 (Lets call it Halal Shaoye for now as they do not have English name yet), opening soon in Wanchai to cater Muslim's crave for mooncakes but can't due to the use of lard, or without any prayer to Allah before slaughtering.

Halal Shaoye is founded by a wholehearted Muslim. The store is still at its preparation stage, waiting to be opened in Wanchai. I will share more details on this page once the store is opened. To offer authentic and certifies Halal food, Halal Shaoye obtains a certificate issued from the Incorporated Trustees of the Islamic Community Fund of Hong Kong to guarantee quality and properly treated Halal food.

I am fortunate enough to savour the very first batch of halal certified mooncake from Halal Shaoye  Without fancy packaging, we are asked for opinion solely on the taste and texture. I was pretty excited as I have not tried Halal food ever!

Single Yolk Purple Sweet Potato Paste Mooncake 紫心蕃薯月餅

The mooncake we are trying from Halal Shaoye is purple sweet potato paste mooncake. It was pretty impressive seeing a huge batch of mooncakes on the tables, freshly baked from the mooncake factory in Hong Kong. I particularly love the halal symbol chopped on top of the pastry, how cool is that!

Differs from traditional lotus mooncake, Halal Shaoye uses purple sweet potato paste and vegetable oil to achieve a healthier taste. The purple sweet potato paste was mildly sweet but not moist enough. Due to the lack of lard, it did not taste as savoury and creamy as the traditional mooncake. The pastry was a bit dry and crumbled off the paste onto the plate. The chef explained the mooncake should left for standing for a few days to let the oil penetrates into the pastry, but the mooncakes we tried today were freshly baked from the factory. They said they would improved by the real production.

The egg yolk taste was fine but was lacking of the aromatic yolk oil. The chef explained they purchased the egg yolk separately instead of using fresh egg. Having said that, I had actually tasted worse egg yolk from more commercial brand (Saint Honore's one was pretty bad.)

Almond Butter Cookies

The almond butter cookies was looking pretty much like the popular brand J, but tasted very differently. Again having "Healthiness" as their main selling point, the almond butter cookies used less oil than the traditional cookies. The texture was quite fluffy and crumbly, but the butter aroma and taste were a bit too weak for my liking. Plus it was super sweet. (Some finds the sweetness alright though.)

Cheese Bread Stick

The cheese bread sticks was surprisingly very crisp! It had a similar texture as Glico's Pocky but much harder. The bread stick was quite airy in the middle as well. There were cheese crumbs on the stick but the cheese tastes did not stand out, what a pity!

The Strawberry Jam

The strawberry jam actually tasted more complex than a jam solely made by strawberry as the taste was a bit strong. The chef explained they added in Rose Wine into the Jam. (Woohoo secret recipe out!) There was some strawberry bits in the jam but was quite smashed up. I personally love the strawberry to be less smashed up to give a nicer texture. Even though the strawberry jam was quite sweet, I quite like it. I smeared a lot on a spongy white bread to bring down the sweetness. Oh, the white bread was made by Halal Shaoye as well.

The Molten Chocolate Cake

We were all deceived by its name, this little cup cake was more like a mousse cake. It tasted like it was not fully baked with a non-cooked flour taste to it. This was pretty disappointing. If they plan to go for this name, they definitely have to improve the recipe alot.

As we all know, all the yummy food are always the ones that are pretty unhealthy to human health. Simple examples would be Deep Fried Chicken, French Fries, Suckling Pig, Roasted Pork etc. The Halal food I tried today are less savoury than normal ones, probably lacked of unhealthy oil in them. I do believe Muslim has a more sensitive taste buds than ours as they are prone to eat healthy. To me, I could not really forgo the sinful food at this stage, but tasting Halal food was a nice experience and it is not bad to be healthy from time to time!

Halal Shaoye 清真笑爺
Store Location - To Be Advised, but probably in Wanchai, Hong Kong

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