Mooncake Festival 2019 - Ultimate price guide to the best mooncakes in Singapore

Hands up if you’ve found yourself Googling “mooncake calories” in an attempt to stop yourself from gorging on mooncakes like there’s no tomorrow.*

In the lead-up to Mooncake Festival — a.k.a. Mid-Autumn Festival, on 13 Sep 2019 — almost every hotel and bakery will be pushing out their own mooncake collections. But unless you’re a die-hard fan of a particular brand, it can be pretty hard to decide which to go for.

Ultimately it depends on what type of mooncake you fancy – whether you go crazy over snow skin mooncakes, creamily pungent durian mooncakes, trendy lava mooncakes or traditional baked mooncakes.

Here’s a quick guide to the best mooncakes in Singapore and where to find them:

RAFFLES HOTEL MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Raffles Hotel mooncakes can shatter the resolve of even the most iron-willed health nut… especially their famous Champagne Truffle snow skin mooncake which resident foodie Eugenia is always banging on about. They’re so delicate and light you won’t even notice you’ve eaten half the box.

You can order Raffles Hotel mooncakes online or buy them from the hotel. Here’s how much they cost:

At $76 to $118 a box, though, these addictive snow skin mooncakes don’t come cheap. However, if you use the right credit card and order early, you can shave up to 25% off your purchase.

Raffles Hotel mooncake 2019 promotion

• 25% off for Standard Chartered Bank cardholders (15 June to 2 Aug 2019) 
• 20% off for Citibank, CIMB, DBS/POSB, HSBC, OCBC and Standard Chartered cardholders (online purchases before 6 Sep 2019)

GOODWOOD PARK MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

For those durian fanatics who just cannot get enough of the smelly fruit, the best place to buy durian mooncakes in Singapore is, obviously, Goodwood Park lah. Given its atas pedigree, it’s a relief to know that there’s a ton of Goodwood Park mooncake promotions to save you a bit of cash.

Now is the best time to grab your durian mooncakes as there’s a 25% off promo for early bird customers buying at least 2 boxes (8 to 16 Aug). It’s not applicable to the premium Mao Shan Wang and Black Thorn durian mooncakes, you can use it for the D24 flavour.

Here’s the price list of Goodwood Park mooncakes. The prices listed are for the 4pc boxes — don’t bother with the 2pc packs, it’s always cheaper to get the bigger box.

Goodwood Park mooncake 2019 promotions (public)

Goodwood Park mooncake 2019 promotions (Hotel Gourmet and credit cards) 

As you would notice, some premium flavours are excluded from the discounts. Some promos are also not available at the Takashimaya and Vivocity outlets.

PEONY JADE MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Like Raffles Hotel and Goodwood Park, Peony Jade mooncakes also have cult appeal in Singapore, in particular the Orh Ni Mooncakes with distinctive flaky crusts (yes, filled with the Teochew yam dessert).

All of Peony Jade mooncakes are on the expensive side, with most flavours costing at least $70 a box of 4. (Some flavours are available in 2pc sets, but don’t bother because those work out to be even pricier.)

If you order between 16 Aug to 9 Sep 2019, you can get at least 10% off the usual prices. You can order Peony Jade mooncakes online with a minimum order of 2 boxes.

Peony Jade mooncake 2019 promotion

• Early bird prices from 10% off usual mooncake prices. Buy (or check prices) on the Peony Jade mooncake online store.

RITZ CARLTON MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Ritz Carlton mooncakes mainly come in snow skin varieties – try the green tea (can’t go wrong with that) and the unique martini flavours. Some of their snow skin mooncakes even have yolks.

The packaging is particularly pretty – the boxes look like jewellery boxes, with the mooncakes sitting in little slide-out “drawers”. Baked mooncakes come in a deep red box while snow skin mooncakes come in a gold one.

You can order Ritz Carlton mooncakes online through their (also) beautifully designed website. At these rather steep prices, you’ll definitely want to order by 13 Sep to get at least 15% discount.

Ritz Carlton mooncake 2019 promotions

• 8 to 21 Jul 2019: 25% off
• 22 Jul to 7 Aug 2019: 20% off
• 8 Aug to 13 Sep 2019: 15% off for Citibank, DBS/POSB, OCBC and UOB cardholders

SHANGRI LA MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Buying mooncakes for traditionalists – your parents or in-laws, perhaps? Shangri La mooncakes will probably do the trick. Shangri La does mostly baked mooncakes only, with the exception of the Shang Palace Mini Snowskin range.

Prices are steep, but luckily there’s a 15% off promo all the way until 13 Sep for most credit cards. So go ahead and impress the Empress Dowager in your life.

Shangri La mooncake 2019 promotions

• Until 13 Sep: 15% off all mooncakes with OCBC, DBS/POSB and Citibank credit cards. 

BAKERZIN MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Finally, some mooncakes that are actually affordable. Bakerzin is one of the more popular non-hotel mooncake choices in Singapore, and focuses on non-traditional flavours. Their box designs are at least presentable enough so you won’t get judged by most people for gifting Bakerzin mooncakes.

Mostly priced at under $65 for a 8pc box (mini size), Bakerzin mooncakes are already on the cheap side. Factor in the 10% early bird discount (until 23 Aug) AND 15% off for Bakerzin members, and you can snag a box of delicious calorie bombs at $40+.

If you have an even smaller budget, you can consider the classic baked flavours that come in 2pc boxes. Those can be as cheap as $20+ during the early bird window.

Here’s the Bakerzin mooncake 2019 price list.

Bakerzin mooncake 2019 promotions

• Until 23 Aug: 10% early bird discount (can stack with member’s discount, below)
• Until 12 Sep: 15% members discount

MEI XIN MOONCAKE SINGAPORE 2019 PRICE LIST

If you’ve ever been to Hong Kong, you would definitely have come across the ubiquitous Maxim’s Cakes, a.k.a. Mei Xin – the HK version of BreadTalk. Every Mooncake Festival, Mei Xin comes up with a bazillion different flavours and HongKongers proceed to go absolutely apeshit.

Thanks to globalisation, you don’t have to fly to Hong Kong and brave the late-summer weather. There’s now a supplier for Mei Xin mooncakes in Singapore. And guess what? They’re pretty affordable too.

There are way too many mooncake flavours to even list here, but here are the more interesting ones. They have some of the cheapest durian mooncakes in Singapore too, at a super affordable $58 a box. But I don’t know what the quality is like.

The prices listed are discounted (as indicated on the online form), but there is no information on what the discount is, and how long it will be valid for. Thus, I’ve added the usual prices next to it, in case the discount(s) change.

Mei Xin mooncake Singapore 2019 promotions

• Discounted prices as indicated on the website.

STARBUCKS MOONCAKE 2019 PRICE LIST

Finally, for those who want to buy mooncakes to feed their Instagram more than their stomachs, the trendiest mooncake set in town has got to be Starbucks mooncakes.

This year, the metal tins come in shades of blue, depicting the mythical Chang E’s bunnies on a crescent moon. It’s not nearly as fancy (or gimmicky) as last year’s galaxy boxes with LED lights, but it’s pretty enough in its own right.

Prices are relatively affordable — compared to the big hotels anyway — and you can further stretch your dollar if you have the Starbucks Card. Members get 15% minimum 2 mooncake box sets.

Starbucks mooncake 2019 promotions

• Pay with Starbucks Card for 15% off with minimum 2 boxes purchase

TAKASHIMAYA MOONCAKE FAIR 2019 (8 AUG TO 13 SEP)

If cannot decide on which brand of mooncakes to get this year, or if you really super cheapskate and don’t mind just eating free mooncake samples, there’s always the famous Takashimaya mooncake fair which gathers approximately 50 brands.

Most of the above hotels and bakeries listed here will be there. You can check out the full list of exhibitors on the Takashimaya Mid-Autumn Festival page.

There are very generous promotions for the first 2 weeks of the fair – think 20% off mooncakes – so be prepared for massive crowds of aunties.

When: 8 Aug 2019 (Thu) to 13 Sep 2019 (Fri)
Where: Takashimaya Square, B2 Ngee Ann City, 391A Orchard Road

Takashimaya mooncake fair 2019 promotions

• 8 Aug to 18 Aug: 20% off selected brands
• 8 Aug to 12 Aug: $10 voucher for first 200 customers per day with min. $250 spend at Takashimaya Department Store
• 22 Aug to 25 Aug: $10 voucher for first 250 customers per day with min. $250 spend at Takashimaya Department Store
• 28 Aug to 1 Sep: 2X $5 Food Hall voucher for first 200 customers per day with min. $120 spend at Takashimaya Square (DBS cardholders only)
• 4 Sep to 8 Sep: 2X $5 Food Hall voucher for first 200 customers per day with min. $120 spend at Takashimaya Square (DBS cardholders only)

* Mooncake calories: There are 700 to 1,000 calories per full-size mooncake. And no, snow skin mooncakes are NOT lower in calories than baked ones, don’t bluff yourself.

This article was first published in MoneySmart .