SunnyHills is famous for its pineapple cakes in Taiwan, which we first encountered during a visit to the iconic Tōkyō flagship store designed by Kengo Kuma. For the mid-Autumn festival in 2022, SunnyHills’ interpretation of the traditional mooncake combined their prized pineapple and apple ingredients to create mooncakes that — in the company’s words — ‘you will actually want to finish, with 65% lesser calories than a traditional mooncake, no artificial additives or preservatives’.

This Pineapple Custard Mooncake was the first of two offered SunnyHills and ‘combines Taiwan Native Pineapples with salted eggs made into a custard to balance the sweet and savoury taste which is so distinctive of traditional mid-autumn flavours’

The top of each mooncake featured a pineapple flower motif that symbolizes the prosperous harvest of pineapple blossoms, which bear blessings of abundance.

The mooncake had the same sweet-salty aroma as traditional mooncakes. Upon tasting, the exterior crust was slightly thicker than a traditional mooncake and gave way easily to the egg yolk layer, which delivered a rich yolky flavour with a subtle savoury hint and fine gritty mouthfeel before reaching the sweeter pineapple centre. A bright tropical sweetness with a balancing acidity came through the pineapple paste, which had a softer and smoother consistency than the pineapple filling of SunnyHills’ signature pineapple cakes and provided a fruity relief to the richness of the salted yolk and welcomed texture to contrast the rest of the mooncake. Overall, the balanced flavours in this mooncake made it one of the most enjoyable we’ve had the pleasure of trying.

This SunnyHills Pineapple Custard Mooncake contained 84 g. It was produced in Taiwan and purchased in Sydney, Australia in 2022.