| Chef Yip created the original custard mooncake as a gift for the Peninsula’s regular clients in 1986 — and watched his creation grow from a handmade delicacy to a much-imitated sensation. Our most pressing question was, of course: What makes a good mooncake? “You can tell the quality of a mooncake based on the texture,” he says. “The custard has to be smooth, it has to smell good, it has to have a little bit of bitterness, a little bit of saltiness. You need to taste the salty egg yolk flavor, but you can’t see it. When you cut it, you can see how much it crumbles,” he says. “It’s a fine balance.”  Chef Yip Wing Wah, testing crunchiness. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg How did you invent the custard mooncake? I started working as a dim sum chef at the Spring Moon Chinese restaurant in the Peninsula in 1986. The restaurant wanted me to make a special gift for customers to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival. They had asked me to make a traditional mooncake, but that isn’t very special. So I came up with the idea to make a custard bao (bun) as a dessert. But then I thought “well, maybe I can make a custard mooncake,” I decided to change the dough, so that the crust of the mooncake would be more like a cookie, made with eggs, butter and sugar, no water – when you bake it, it smells really good because of the butter. And I added the custard filling to make it tastier and thought “oh, this is pretty good.”
How did it get popular? The mooncake was so well received that customers wanted to purchase them but we didn't have enough supply. The following year, in 1987, we decided to make more and sell them. This was the first year of selling custard mooncakes and it was so successful that year that we decided to eventually move to a factory style production to increase supply. However, we still kept the original Spring Moon custard mooncakes made inside the hotel, though there is limited supply on these as there are no preservatives in them. How have customers’ tastes changed over the years? Back when I created the recipe in 1986, it was very custardy, it crumbled very easily. I made them by hand, but when other people started making them with machines, they had to change the recipe. And people’s tastes are different to back then -- now we have significantly more flavours, we want to accommodate different tastes so everyone can enjoy the mooncake experience. When we were kids, as long as you got a mooncake you were happy. Now, people want to try new things.  Peninsula's also-ran entry. Photographer: Justin Chin/Bloomberg What do you think about non-traditional mooncakes? All kinds of shops will make mooncakes to take part in the Mid-Autumn Festival – a chocolate shop will make chocolate ones, Western bakeries will cater to the needs of their clients. It doesn’t matter what filling it is, as long as you have that mooncake mold, you can transform it however you want, as long as it’s round like the moon. How will mooncakes change in the future? Now we are making low-sugar mooncakes, to make them healthier. Eventually someone will find a way of making mooncakes with no sugar. But it’s not so easy because you can’t just take out the sugar. The crust isn’t going to be the same texture, you’ll need to refine the recipe.
What makes Hong Kong mooncakes special? In Hong Kong, each shop has their own specialty. They’re all different, there’s more variety; overseas you won’t have as much selection. With mooncakes, it doesn’t matter where you make them, the most important thing is the spirit in which you make the mooncake, and that you use the best ingredients, and focus on the taste. | 
