Gourmet Baker Brings Mid-Autumn Festival to ‘Foodie & The Beast’

Cakes By Happy Eatery Mooncake Tradition Featured on Top DC Food Podcast

WASHINGTON DC, DC, UNITED STATES, October 3, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Victoria Wu from Cakes By Happy Eatery brought Mid-Autumn Festival late last month to ‘Foodie & The Beast’, one of the Washington DC area’s top food podcasts hosted by David and Nycci Nellis since they originally launched the show for WTOP Radio in 2008.

“Mooncakes are not just desserts—they’re memories, traditions, and connections wrapped up in delicate pastry,” says Wu, who celebrated the 40th anniversary of her family-owned bakery last year.

Mooncakes are an Asian dessert delicacy that are enjoyed throughout the year, but claim their traditional origins from Mid-Autumn Festival, the 3,000-year-old holiday that started during China’s Zhou Dynasty. Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated annually on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month (this year on Monday, Oct. 6, 2025), and is sometimes called the “Moon Festival” or “Mooncake Festival.” Families gather to admire the harvest moon, light lanterns, and—of course—share mooncakes.

“Mid-Autumn Festival is the second most celebrated Chinese holiday and is catching on all over the world now,” says Wu. “Mooncakes are to the festival what pies are to Thanksgiving, and the holidays share a similar focus on gathering families together.”

Mooncakes are round pastries, traditionally filled with lotus seed paste or red bean paste, sometimes with a salted egg yolk in the center to symbolize the moon. Today, bakers like Cakes by Happy Eatery have put their own spin on flavors while still honoring tradition. Think matcha, taro, or even chocolate mooncakes. Each one is rich, dense, and made for slicing and sharing—because the festival is about togetherness.

Wu says two new flavors for 2025 include Pumpkin Patch (pumpkin shaped mooncakes with a candied pumpkin filling and toasted pumpkin seeds) and Black Sesame Peanut Butter, the latter a blending of two popular flavors giving the classic flavors a modern twist: Black Sesame with a creamy Peanut Butter lava center.

“We frequently experiment with new flavors in everything we bake,” says Wu, “and mooncakes are no different.” Popular flavors include Green Tea, Winter melon, Taro, Lemon Ginger, Red Bean with Mixed Nuts – which brings together two classic mooncake flavors – Black Sesame and Pina Colada.” Other modern flavors the Wu sisters have seen include chocolate, truffles, foie gras and ice cream.

Mooncake styles and taste also vary by region. Cantonese are the most recognized for their thin golden-brown crust, often featuring a salted egg yolk center (which represents the moon). Beijing style offers a thicker, more crumbly crust; Suzhou mooncakes are known for their flaky, layered pastry and savory fillings like pork and ham.

“My family is from the Cantonese region and so that influences our tradition,” Wu explains. “Every mooncake tells a story. The intricate patterns pressed into the top are symbols of good luck, longevity, or family unity. It’s not just food – it’s a gift. Families buy boxes of mooncakes to give to friends, coworkers, and neighbors as a way of spreading blessings.”

With David and Nycci Nellis, Wu talked about what goes in to making the mooncakes, and it reminded the hosts of the process of making dumplings. The tools for making and shaping them are pretty much the same. Both are formed by encasing a filling within a layer of dough or skin, and both require some form of shaping to enclose the filling so that it doesn’t leak out.

“What I love about this time of year is observing the faces of customers when they pick up their mooncakes and hearing their stories,” says Wu. “Some carrying on family traditions from far away; others are discovering mooncakes for the very first time. It reminded me of how food has the power to bring cultures closer together.”

For more information about mooncakes and Mid-Autumn Festival, go to www.cakesbyhappyeatery.com .

About Cakes by Happy Eatery

Known regionally for their inventive, fabulous, and versatile creations in the kitchen, Cakes by Happy Eatery was founded in 1984 by Woei and Fu-Mei Wu and have been Manassas since 2009. Two of their daughters – Victoria and Emily –operate the business today and have since 2000, although their mother Fu-Mei
still comes in almost every day and is still the defacto matriarch. The sisters create and design custom cakes and dessert bars that showcase every kind of special occasion, event or season, producing pieces of art that taste incredibly delicious. Their full-service bakery includes an onsite café for dining throughout the day and operate a thriving catering business featuring cakes are baked from scratch daily and never frozen (besides ice cream cakes) by a team of very talented bakers and pastry chefs.

Victoria and Emily are both regularly featured guests and dessert experts on NBC, FOX, ABC and CBS affiliates in the Virginia/Maryland/DC area and are known for showcasing cutting-edge trends and creative recipes and presentation designs. For further information go to www.cakesbyhappyeatery.com

Richard Matthews
MCM
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