A friend had let me know that yet another Taiwanese bakery/sweets company had arrived here in New York City, and it’s Bake Culture USA. I realized that we had passed it many times on our way to Renew Day Spa along Bowery for massages, but I kind of overlooked it since it looked very trendy from the outside, and I already had my staple bakeries that I loved. She convinced me to go when she told me about their special mooncakes, which included black sesame and taro flavors, as well as even a mochi filling! I’ve really only ever had traditional mooncake fillings such as salted yolks, lotus paste (my favorite), red bean, or green tea paste, so I wanted to see what this was all about.

Of course, when I went in, they had many beautiful gift boxes for the mooncakes, but I made a beeline to the individually wrapped mooncakes. Since leaving home in 2004, I haven’t always eaten mooncake around the time of Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, which this year, falls on October 1. I’ve been spotty about buying them myself, especially since my last roommate and now Chris aren’t that fond of them. The ones at Bake Culture probably weren’t even two inches in diameter, but they were $4 each! These are a lot more expensive than the ones my family used to buy, but at least the size was right, so I was willing to get three of them.

The black sesame mochi one is the only one I’ve had so far, and while the black sesame wasn’t very pronounced, I loved the mochi texture on the inside. I’m not sure if it would be worth getting again, but I do like the novelty of mochi in mooncake.