/ARTS WEEKLY/CULTURE: Chocolate Moon Cakes Are Festive Too

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Alecia D. McKenzie

SINGAPORE, Sep 20 2005 (IPS) - As the Mid-Autumn Festival draws to a close in many Asian countries and communities, people are busy buying ‘moon cakes’ to share with friends and family or to give as gifts. Most of these cakes are made with the traditional bean-paste or lotus-seed filling, but from a – remote” corner of Singapore come moon cakes with a difference – made from pure chocolate.

These chocolate moon cakes have been selling like, well, hot bread, much to the delight of their creator, Belgian pastry chef and chocolatier, Geert Renmans. Belgium, of course, is famous for its chocolate, and two years ago Renmans decided to apply this age-old skill to Asian moon cakes.

– It started with a Chinese client who wanted something special for corporate gifts,” Renmans recalls. ôAnd from there, things just grew.”

In 2003, Renmans made just a few thousand moon cakes for this particular client and for friends. But word of the chocolate delights spread from ômouth to mouth”, as he puts it, and this year he has been inundated with orders. Some of the moon cakes have been selling at the Singapore-based French restaurant Vis-à-Vis, and its co-owner Vivian Wong says that the clientele has been pleased.

ôThey are lovely,” says Wong. ôI’ve eaten them myself. I’m not really a moon cake kind of person, so this works great for chocolate-lovers who can have their moon cake and eat it too.”

These chocolate moon cakes have indeed come a long way from their historical counterparts. One legend has it that moon cakes were created during the Yuan dynasty (A.D. 1279-1368) when China was ruled by the Mongols. The citizens were unhappy with this foreign rule and drew up a plan for rebellion. The outline of the attack was drafted onto the backs of special cakes and distributed to rebels, who then successfully overthrew the rulers.

Today moon cakes are eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival (also called moon cake festival) partly to commemorate this legendary event. The festival, which is based on the lunar cycle, is usually held between the second week of September and the second week of October and celebrates the brightest full or harvest moon of the year.

Renmans, an exuberant and slightly portly 34-year-old, likes the legend and uses it to promote his moon cakes, which are smaller and thinner than the traditional versions.

The Belgian formed his own chocolate-producing company last year and named it ôMaison Gerard” or House of Gerard (which is the French version of his Flemish first name) to make both moon cakes and other chocolates. The company is located in a far corner of Singapore, near the Malaysian border. To get to it, one has to pass shipyards, warehouses and variety of factories selling all manner of goods.

Maison Gerard is in a building where, ironically, some of the other tenants produce bean paste – a filling for traditional moon cakes and other Asian desserts. As one enters the chocolate factory, one is struck by the temperature û it’s very cool in here, in stark contrast to the natural heat and humidity of Singapore.

ôYes, my electricity bills are sky-high because of the air-con, but we don’t want the chocolate to melt,” says Renmans with a laugh.

His core staff of three Malay women is busy at different tasks. One is squeezing melted chocolate over pieces of roasted almonds, while another is shaping dark chocolate into swirls. The third is busy preparing a moon-cake mould. All are wearing hats, masks and gloves, as both Renmans and the Singapore Ministry of Health takes food hygiene seriously.

On a nearby metal table lie several boxes of moon cakes, ready for distribution. Some are made from dark chocolate with a bittersweet chocolate filling, some are made of milk chocolate and others of white chocolate. The smell alone is enough to make one’s mouth start watering.

As he shows a visitor around, Renmans puts on a glove and samples his own products. He is involved in everyone stage of production, including the tasting.

ôI have to have my gall bladder removed next week because my doctor says I’ve eaten too much chocolate,” he reveals. But he doesn’t intend to stop.

ôI grew up with this stuff. I used to eat bread and chocolate when I was a kid,” he adds.

Born in the university town of Leuven, near the Belgian capital Brussels, Renmans always knew he wanted to make sweet things. After high school, he studied to become a pastry chef, first in Belgium and later in Switzerland, and he also did ôpatisserie” internships in the United States and France.

Somewhere along the way, however, he decided to be a monk and actually spent four years in a monastery, but pastry and chocolate seemed to be his real calling, he says.

He came to Singapore in 2001 and quickly got a job as pastry chef at the Vis-à-Vis French restaurant, later moving on to work at a local chocolate producer before starting his own business. He invested S$100,000 of savings in machinery, ingredients, packaging and, of course, ingredients.

Renmans says he uses only fresh ingredients, and he points to a mint plant on the premises to prove the point. He also refrains from using artificial flavouring or preservatives.