Annie T's Cakes

For Mid-Autumn Festival this year, a co-worker brought in a bunch of treats from Annie T's Cakes, a local small Chinese bakery that makes small batch cakes and cookies.  The business is entirely vegan, and mostly organic.

Since this was for Mid-Autumn Festival, I mostly got to sample the mooncakes, but I'd like to try their pineapple cakes some day.

Almond Cookies.

"A crunch on the edge and softer chew towards the center, these cookies have the distinct almond flavor of that beloved childhood classic. Annie's T Cakes recently recreated this cookie for the San Francisco pre-screening of A24 studio's latest feature film Everything Everywhere All At Once starring Michelle Yeoh."

The almond cookies were a bit plain for me.  That said, I'm not usually all that excited about cookies.  The flavor was subtle.  They were only lightly sweet.  They did have a nice chew to them, and I liked the almond in the center.  I think fairly authentic Asian style cookies, far less sweet and decadent than the American style sugar/butter bombs I am used to.  ***.

Red Bean Mooncake.

"This mooncake has a sweet red bean filling perfect to pair with light teas or just on its own. With a subtle sweetness, it's sure to hit the spot."

The first mooncake I tried was the red bean one.  The pastry was soft, a bit crumbly, and very lightly sweet.  Since these are vegan, clearly no lard used.  It was generously stuffed with red bean filling.  Fairly decent clear red bean flavor, very lightly sweet as well.  It did not have whole bits of red bean in it, mostly just a soft homogenous mush.

Overall, a pretty classic mooncake.  No better nor worse than others I've had.  The most subtle of the ones I tried from Annie T's.  ***.

Black Sesame Mooncake.

"This black sesame mooncake has a deep, nutty flavor perfect to pair with light teas, dark coffee, or a warm milk tea."

Next I went for the black sesame, always a favorite of mine.  The pastry was the same here, soft, slightly crumbly, lightly sweet.  It too was very well filled with the filling, this time, black sesame paste.  This filling had lots of texture and grit from the sesame seeds.  The flavor was far more intense than the red bean one, deeply nutty as promised, very clearly identifiable as black sesame.  Again very lightly sweet.

I liked this one the most, as I really like black sesame, but, there wasn't anything remarkable about this.  ***+.

Hojicha Mooncake.

"In Chinese tradition, mooncakes are most often eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. These hojicha mooncakes are made with high quality roasted green tea, giving the mooncake an earthy flavor. They're not too sweet and perfect to satisfy your snack cravings."

Annie T's makes three different tea filled cakes: jasmine, matcha, and hochija.  I think I picked the hochija, but I'm not 100% certain.  Again, same pastry case.  This filling was a fairly bright flavor compared to the others, and again, very identifiable as tea (of some kind).  This filling did seem to have bits of bean as well, but, black ones.  There was certainly a fair amount of texture to it.  I think this one would pair really nicely with tea.

My least favorite as I'm not wild about tea flavors, but, the flavor was nice.  ***.