Walnut Mooncakes

I baked up a new batch of these yesterday for mom, since I was meeting her for dinner. I like the way the crust crumbles when you bite into it, the fragrance of the lotus seed paste mixed with the walnuts and salted egg yolk. The good part about baking them on your own is that I can be indulgent with the amount of walnuts I add. Mom was commenting that the walnut pieces were huge. You’d never find them in store bought ones. Here are some photos! (Photoshop is down so there are no captions, for now.)

For those that were asking, here’s the recipe. It’s taken from here, another baker’s food blog but I’ve made a few slight changes to the filling to suit my own taste.

Ingredients:
360g Plain flour
25g Custard Powder
1/2 tsp Sodium Bicarbonate
50g Icing sugar
50g Shortening
220g Butter (salted)
1 egg
1/2 tsp Vanilla Essence
1/2 tsp Ammonium Bicarbonate
1 Egg + 1 tbsp water (for glazing)
Walnut for decoration

Filling:
1 kg White Lotus Paste
6 salted egg yolks (each cut into 6-8 pieces)

Method:
1. Cream sugar, shortening, butter, vanilla flavour and ammonium together until slightly white. (slow speed first then change to high speed)
2. Gradually add in egg.
3. Lastly add in sifted flour, custard powder and sodium bicarbonate to knead into a dough. (don’t mix too long) Leave dough in fridge overnight.
4. Steam egg yolks for about 5 minutes. Cut each yolk into 6 – 8 pieces, depending on the size of the yolk.
5. Take out dough from fridge and divide into portions of 20 gm each.
6. Divide fillings into about 25 gm each.
7. Make a dent in each ball of filling and place a piece of egg yolk in it.
8. Wrap fillings into dough and decorate with walnut.
9. Apply egg wash and bake at 160ºC for 10 mins. Take it out and leave it for about 10 mins and apply egg wash again. Bake for another 15 -20 mins.