Celebrate mid-autumn festival with Kak Semah's halal mooncakes

KUCHING: The Mooncake Festival is around the corner and it is a busy time for 41-year-old entrepreneur Noor Asmah Mohamed Mokhtar and her family who would be working from dawn everyday to produce about 7,000 pieces of mooncakes ordered during the festive season.
The festival, which is known as the Mid-Autumn Festival among the Chinese community, is the time when the home bakery would receive orders from the Muslim community from as far as Brunei and Singapore for the delectable Kak Semah mooncakes.
The festival is celebrated throughout the world on the 15th of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar which falls on October 4 this year.
The businesswoman, who called herself Kak Semah, said she began producing mooncakes in 2010, one year after her bakery began operation from the house in Kuching.
"I obtain the mooncake recipe from my late mother-in-law who was a Chinese Muslim. This is a seasonal business as the main ingredient, which is lotus seeds, is purchased once a year and I need to know when is the festival as the date changes every year," she told Bernama.
Noor Asmah began producing about 300 mooncakes in 2010 and the demand has since grown to 7,000 this year.
"Everyday I produce about 300 pieces of dough and mooncake fillings. The preparation cannot be done in a haste as the raw mooncakes have to kept overnight to harden before baking them in an oven," she said.
"On the second day, the cakes would be coated with egg yolk and baked for 15 minutes at 180° celcius before being taken out and applied with a second layer of egg yolk and baked for another 15 minutes after which the cakes would acquire a shiny yellow appearance," she said.
Kak Semah said after baking, the mooncakes have to be left to stand for four or five days for fermentation which will bring out the oil and makes mooncakes softer and delicious to eat.
"In short, to produce a delicious piece of mooncake takes about a week," she said, adding that the traditional cakes could last up to four months.
Kak Semah produces 15 flavours of mooncakes priced between RM13 and RM38 a piece such as lotus seeds with salted egg yolk, lotus seeds with red beans, lotus seeds with pandan or durian.
She said her seasonal business depended on the support of her family including her three daughters as the products were being sold to several states in the peninsula, Labuan as well as Brunei and Singapore.
"Apart from Muslims who wanted to try mooncakes, I also received orders from non-Muslims as well as members of the Malaysia Chinese Muslims Association (Macma) in Sarawak," she said.
For Kak Semah, her mooncakes have enabled Muslims to confidently sample the delicacy.
With the festival just a week away, Kak Semah, assisted by her husband Mohd Azaman Abdul Rahman, 50, and her three children Adriana Aisya Farhan, 16, Ahmad Rasydan, 14 and Amanda Rania Zafreen, 11 are busy meeting the orders as well as sending the cakes to her customers.
In Kuching, the 16th International Kuching Mooncake Festival from Thursday (Sept 28) to Oct 4 will be held at Carpenter Street as an effort to foster the spirit of integration among the various races and cultures in Sarawak. — Bernama