Making Mooncakes: What’s inside these pocket-sized pastries?

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Mid-Autumn Festival is about getting together with family and enjoying a short three-day holiday. But like nearly every celebration in China, it's also about food, particularly mooncakes. CGTN reporter Omar Khan heads to the kitchen to stir things up.

I've arrived here at a café in downtown Beijing, ready for class to begin.

Today I'll be putting my run-of-the-mill culinary skills to the test, making Chinese mooncakes.

Luckily for me, however, mooncake artist and cookbook author, Peng Xie, is here to offer a helping hand.

Step one involves stirring in the mooncake mix and cocoa powder and then adding some boiling water.

Things start to get a little sticky as we prepare the bean paste filling.

But there's plenty of room for mooncake making to go awry, and as my teacher explains, there are a few pointers to keep in mind.

Next, we roll the outer layer of the mooncake shell, and the inner filling into mini sized balls.

Then comes flattening the outside part of the mooncake, and infusing the inner core with a sweet paste.

Finally, we wrap them up into what should resemble a nearly finished mooncake.

No matter if it's your first time making mooncakes or if it's been a tradition since you were young, the variety and type of these delicacies, is nearly endless.

OMAR KHAN BEIJING "Now despite all of those types of mooncakes, this one here is the lotus seed kind. But before we dive in and take a bite out of this delicious looking treat, there are a few finishing touches needed."

Finally, we load up the mould, stuffing it with my bun-like-looking mooncake and give it a nice hard and long press.

Voila, there it is, just a sprinkle of chocolate frosting, and we're able to experience the mid-autumn festival in a more authentic way.

Millions of people across China and parts of Southeast Asia will be gobbling these pastries up, and even though they're stuffed with quite the amount of calories, it's all been worth it. Omar Khan, CGTN, Beijing.