The story goes that, once upon a time, in the sky, there was a fairy called The Moon Lady. She was very beautiful and a devoted ruler of the vast land of The Shimmering Moon.
One day, The Jade Emperor organized a cake-making competition under the full moon of August. The most delicious and best-looking cake will be selected as traditional cake for The Mid-Autumn Festival.
The Moon Lady was very excited and eager to join the contest. When she came down to earth to find inspiration, she met Cuoi - a boy who had quite a flair for boasting . Every night, the children surrounded around Cuoi under a banyan tree at the entrance to the village to listen to his craps.
Not only was he always bragging, Cuoi was also very good at cooking and he often made cakes for the children in the village, so they had great affection for him. Having known that, The Moon Lady was very happy and wanted to collaborate with Cuoi to create a new kind of cake. Cuoi was so confident in his cooking ability that he immediately said yes to the proposal.
But as always, he played around the clock, neglected to prepare the cake for the full moon night. The Moon Lady was so worried that she was constantly reminding Cuoi of his promise. Cuoi thought to himself, "As I am so quick-witted, there will definitely be delicious cakes on the full moon!", and then he continued to wander about until the end of the 14th lunar calendar.
In the morning of the full moon day, Cuoi hurriedly headed to the market to buy ingredients. However, at this time, there were only Chinese sausages, sesame, peanuts and some pork fat left. Back home, he managed to think about the recipe for the cake but ended up mixing all the ingredients together, coupled with a little lotus jam contributed by the children. Meanwhile, the crust was made from flour and sugar water, squarely shaped with a symbol of a rabbit under the moon.
And to his astonishment, the cakes were so fragrant and came with tremendous compliments from the children who were the first to taste them. Although they weren’t very beautiful, they were the best cakes that the children had ever eaten.
When the time came, The Moon Lady brought these delicious unnamed cakes to heaven for the competition. Due to their shape, The Emperor named them “the mooncake”.
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