Price tags on the sweet treat sold in hotels, heartland shops and supermarkets have swelled by between 5 and 20 per cent, following jumps in the cost of ingredients like flour and lotus paste.

A 35kg bag of flour now costs $38, up from $25 last year, while lotus paste now costs $9 per kg, up from $7.50 last year.

Hotel Ritz-Carlton, for example, is charging $48 for four white lotus seed paste mooncakes with double yolks this year, up from $45 last year.

Supermarket chain Sheng Siong is selling low-end, no-frills mooncakes under the Bright Pearl China brand at $4.95 for four 500g cakes, up from $4.20 last year.

And at least four small-scale bakeries in the heartland are charging 50 cents more per cake this year, a 12 per cent hike. Because it is no longer as profitable, and demand is uncertain, some bakeries are making fewer mooncakes - or none.

Mr Peter Foo of Yong Hong Bakery & Confectionery in Aljunied is making only 120 this year, down from last year's 200.

He said: 'The economy is not that good, so we predict a fall in sales. If we make too much and can't sell, that's money down the drain.'

Mrs Iris Neo, who runs a bakery in Ang Mo Kio, is not even making them for the first time in five years. 'Everything is so expensive, fewer people are buying and everyone is selling,' she explained.

She added that people were eating fewer these days 'because it is too sweet'.

Higher-end retailers, however, are more optimistic: Hotel Fairmont Singapore expects sales to equal or exceed last year's; sales to corporate groups at Pine Garden's Cake in Ang Mo Kio are 10 per cent higher than at this time last year.

Retail management lecturer Sarah Lim of Singapore Polytechnic noted that individuals or corporate groups who buy high-end mooncakes from hotels will usually not blanch at paying more.

'But at heartland stores, the target market is heartlanders who buy for their own consumption, so a few cents' increase will mean a lot,' she added.

Housewife Mabel Tjong, 52, has found a way to dodge the higher prices - by making her own at half what it costs to buy them. She has spent $200 to make 200 mooncakes so far to give away.

JESSICA LIM