We Eat It So You Don't Have To: Haagen-Dazs Mooncakes
By Jonty Dixon
Additional writing by Bridget O'Donnell
'We Try It' is a regular series where we try the latest off-beat food and beverage offerings.
Mid-Autumn Festival is here, which means mooncake season is upon us.
Not a fan of the standard mooncakes you may have been bombarded gifted with over the last few days? If you’ve got a small fortune, then perhaps Haagen-Dazs’ ice cream mooncakes could be more suited to your tastes.
These not-so-dainty mooncakes will set you back as much as RMB83 for a single top-of-the-line cake. If you don’t have your own African gold mine to fund your ice cream mooncake addiction, a box of five ice cream mooncakes from the 'Petite Collection' will only set you back about RMB268.
We forked out for the top range 'Rose Legend' mooncakes (RMB888 per set).
These exclusively priced mooncakes certainly looked lovely, but unfortunately you can’t eat with your eyes and the overall experience was a bit like a very posh choc ice.
Waxy and rather tasteless, the rose, while inviting, offered stern resistance to our attempts to break down the walls of chocolate underneath.
Once the walls were breached, we were finally granted access the soft ice cream underbelly.
The ice cream itself is the classic 'Isaphan' flavor, first made famous by French baker Pierre Hermé. It combines vanilla cream with rose, raspberry, and lychee.
The best bit of the experience, especially for the pile of money we handed over at the beginning, was the mango sorbet core intended to resemble the salted egg yolk commonly found in traditional sweet mooncakes. But while it certainly lifted the dessert up, we were left questioning whether the fight to get there was really worth it.
Our tip would be to wait for them to thaw before you attempt your assault, as they initially come out so cold and solid that you could build the world’s smallest, most expensive igloo with them. Or maybe just stick to the classic mooncakes for a fraction of the cost.
Haagen-Dazs' ice cream mooncakes are mad popular. At least one branch we visited in Shanghai earlier this week had already completely sold out of the treats ahead of the holiday. We'd recommend either ordering from their national Chinese-language hotline (400-820-9815) or visiting their website before these elusive cakes fly off the shelves at other Haagen-Dazs branches across the country.
They've also got a bunch of variations of boxed ice cream mooncake collections available, including a Frozen-themed set of six (RMB628) and a special commemorative set of nine Mickey and Minnie Mouse-themed cakes (RMB568), designed in honor of the grand opening of Shanghai Disneyland.
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