It’s the Mid Autumn festival again! The festive season where shopping centres start to display stalls selling a variety of mooncakes. Mooncakes used to be pretty traditional but lately, they have evolved so much that I cannot even recognise them as mooncakes anymore. Now mooncakes come in a large variety of shapes, sizes and flavours; lately, there has been some rage here over “butt-shaped” mooncakes. Yes! I’m not kidding. They are made by Hong Kong’s Goods of Desire (G.O.D) and are shaped like butts because butts look like full moons. Hmm…
For all the hype, I still prefer traditional mooncakes or snowskin ones. I’ve tried some of these exotic flavours (e.g. lychee martini, truffles, jackfruit, etc) and I have yet to find one that I really like. Except durian mooncakes. I can live with those.
So, two years back, I started to make my own mooncakes. It is alot of fun and it is definitely cheaper than buying. So far I have tried making walnut mooncakes and snow skin mooncakes successfully. For walnut mooncakes, I like to add large pieces of walnuts to the pastry; it really brings out the flavour of the mooncake. The pastry is crumbly and contrasts the smooth lotus paste. This year, I added toasted melon seeds to the lotus paste and am happy with the results. Do they look professional enough to you?
- 360g Plain flour
- 30g Custard Powder
- ½ tsp Baking soda
- 50g Icing sugar
- 50g Shortening
- 220g unsalted butter
- 1 egg
- ½ tsp Vanilla Essence
- 100g toasted melon seeds
- 750g White Lotus Paste
- 6-7 salted egg yolks (each cut into 6 pieces)
- 1 Egg + 1 tbsp water (for glazing)
- Walnut for decoration
- In a large bowl, sift flour, custard powder and baking soda together. Whisk ingredients together and set aside.
- In the bowl of a standing mixer set to medium high speed, cream sugar, shortening and butter together until slightly pale.
- Gradually add in egg and vanilla and beat on medium high speed.
- Fold in flour mixture in two parts. Refrigerate dough overnight.
- Take out dough from fridge and divide into portions of 20g each.
- Bake salted egg yolks for 5 minutes at 160ºC. Set aside to cool. Cut each yolk into 6 pieces.
- Mix melon seeds with lotus paste. Divide fillings into about 25g each.
- Wrap a piece of salted egg yolk in each ball of filling.
- Wrap fillings into dough and decorate with walnut.
- Apply egg wash on mooncakes and bake at 160ºC for 10 mins.
- Remove from oven and apply egg wash. Allow mooncakes to rest for 10 mins. Return to oven and bake for another 20 mins.
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