Traditional Mooncakes

Time flies? Mid-Autumn festival is almost here. After last year's first attempt at making mooncakes, I simplified my "process" a little, as I already have the mooncake mould, and I know where to get the fried glutinous flour and ready-made lotus seeds paste, or which trusted recipe to go to :D

Amidst my minor renovation at home, I managed to make the snow skin mooncakes following the same recipe I used last year (but this time using strawberries), which I did not manage to take any photo :p

Found this recipe on Teacher Carol's blog, which looks similar to the recipe I attempted last year. I do not have parmesan cheese powder, thus I replaced with more milk powder. The mooncake skin is crunchy on the first day, and subsequently on the 2nd day, turns soft. As traditional mooncakes always taste better after 1-2 days. Although this recipe is titled Cantonese Style Red Bean mooncake, the ingredients look similar to the Taiwanese Style Mooncake I baked last year. I really like these 2 versions :)

The first picture is my attempt to make some piglets, which look quite strange :D Making figurines is tough, I knew that when I did the fondant cake for my gal. This time, my daughter requested for some "kosong" (she learns a few Malay words in school :D) mooncakes, as she prefers the mooncake skin over the lotus seeds fillings. "Kosong" means "empty", i.e., no filling in this case :)

Ingredients (makes 10, 5-cm diameter mooncakes)

- 65g cake flour

- 16g skimmed milk powder (from baking store)

- pinch of salt

- 15g unsalted butter, soften at room temperature

- 20g icing sugar

- 15g golden syrup

- 20g beaten whole egg

- store-bought lotus seeds paste (make into 30g balls)

- some beaten egg for brushing

Method

1. Mix butter, salt and icing sugar using a whisk.

2. Add golden syrup and continue mixing.

3. Add egg and continue mixing until ingredients mix evenly.

4. Add milk powder and fold in using a spatula.

5. Add sifted cake flour and fold using a spatula. Do not over mix. Mixture may look sticky, but as long as the dough comes together, stop and cover with plastic wrap. Leave for 30mins.

6. Put some flour on worktop to prevent dough from sticking onto it. Knead dough briefly. Distribute dough into 10 equal parts. Flatten each dough and wrap lotus seeds paste inside. The skin will look very thin. It will be helpful if you watch some mooncake making videos to learn the technique.

7. Stamp out the mooncake using a mooncake mould/plunger. I am using the plunger type. Remember to flour the plunger so that the dough will not stick to it.

8. Bake at 210 degC preheated oven for 7 mins. Remove from oven, brush a thin layer of egg on the mooncakes, then return to oven and bake at 200 degC for 12-15 mins. Please adjust temperature according to your oven. When the top appears golden brown, it is done.

The mooncakes in the second photo are made by my daughter. Not bad right? :) The first time I made it I did not put flour in the mould, thus my mooncakes looked very funny :D I told her and she put lots of flour :p you can see traces of flour on her mooncakes. But the patterns are nicely imprinted on the mooncake. She did a good job :)

Please find the detailed recipe and method on teacher Carol's blog.

Happy baking! :)