I’m currently in Buenos Aires, a city I haven’t visited since I took a press trip here over 5 years ago.

It’s a city full of contrasts: swanky high end boutiques nestle next to shabby chic and rundown buildings. I love the fact that there’s a constant smell of smoky asado in the air, but hate the fact that the streets are liberally smeared with dog poo (no doubt as a direct consequence of the huge numbers of dog walkers, who are looking after up to 10 dogs at a time).

And yet within this city, there are constant new discoveries and trends to be found. Today’s were moon cakes from Les Croquants.

Les Croquants is a charming little patisserie and cake shop in the Palermo area of Buenos Aires.  They offer a whole range of the expected cakes, including cookies, cupcakes, macarons and muffins.  However the thing that caught my eye, was their range of mooncakes.

Traditionally a mooncake is a lard based pastry encasing a variety of fillings, including lotus bean paste, salted egg and mixed nuts.  They are eaten to celebrate the mid autumn festival in Asia. Owing to the heavy nature of the cakes, they’ve been declining in popularity, and in Asia, they have been superceded by snow skin moon cakes, which use a fresh cool skin which is served chilled. I can only assume that one of the owners must have an Asian background for them to produce their range.

 

The bakery offers six different flavours:

Citrus

Chocolate and almond

Dulce de leche and nuts

Raspberry, white chocolate and coconut

Vanilla cream and oreo

Pistachio, white chocolate and lemon

..and they are delicious with a cafe con leche!