First Mango Snowskin Mooncakes :)

Have you started preparing for Mid-Autumn Festival? I started my mooncake making early (as usual) so that there is time for improvement :p

Since last month, I have been searching for an easy snowskin mooncake recipe and watched many videos on how to make mooncakes :p I see "Shortening" in almost all the mooncake recipes. Apparently, based on what I read on the web, shortening is "any fat that is solid in room temperature" (Source: Wikipedia) . It can refer to either lard or hydrogenated vegetable oil. Which means it contains trans fat and is not heart-healthy. Since I am making the mooncakes myself, I might as well make it healthier (does not mean that my mooncakes are healthy :p).

I stumbled upon this recipe, which uses only 10g of olive oil. Wow, fantastic! Just what I am looking for. Thanks to Sugar & Everything Nice for sharing this wonderful recipe :) Take a look at her mooncakes, so pretty with the strawberry in the centre (& the strawberry sliced right in the centre beautifully)! Wow.

As the strawberries did not look very fresh at the supermarket,  I bought mangoes instead. Prior to this, I had my SIL to buy ready-made mango and original lotus paste for me :)

While, I did attempt to make the paste myself... but ended in failure :p My lotus paste was not smooth enough, and tasted nothing like the store-bought ones. Last week, my friend came to my house and we made red bean paste together, but somehow, the paste did not taste right. I guess not enough "kungfu" :p

After last week's failure, I finally confirmed that making your own paste is really not easy, and not for me yet :p Store-bought is the safest :)

I made these twice - first time, I made a few adjustments: replaced the strawberry puree with mango puree; omit strawberries in the middle; used lotus seeds paste instead of red bean paste); reduced the amount of sugar to 40g as the mangoes were sweet. The skin was very soft, so it can go out of shape easily when you handle it.

The second attempt, I  made a bigger portion. Also reduced the amount of olive oil (previous batch looked a bit oily). The skin was soft and in my opinion, tastes more like mooncake :)

(Adapted recipe from Sugar & Everything Nice. Please click here to view the original recipe and method.)


Ingredients:
75g fried glutinous flour
80g icing sugar
90g mango puree (increased the amount of puree and reduced water)
30g warm water
15g olive oil (reduced)

Store-bought mango lotus seeds paste

I guess if you like mango, you will love these. The mango lotus seeds paste has strong mango flavour, and the skin this time is not too oily.

Both my kid and I enjoyed using the plunger moulds :D There is a kid in everyone I guess? :)

Will attempt other flavours soon, hope to experiment with more fruits, such as kiwi :)