Traditional Mooncakes (First Attempt)

As the price of moon cakes increases over the years, I find it very hard to part with hard earned money to buy them. Even though, every year bakeries and hotels come out with new and interesting flavors to justify their price increase, traditional moon cakes are best to pair with a good cup of Chinese tea (IMHO). 

All thanks to internet and passionate bloggers who are willing to share their moon cakes recipes, I started making my own moon cakes 2 years ago. 

The recipe for the moon cake skin can be used to wrap a multitude of fillings available from baking supply stores.

My family like the premium white lotus paste with or without the salted egg yolk, lotus paste with pine nuts, lotus paste with chocolate ganache center, mixing in a little green tea powder into the lotus paste to make green tea moon cake or mixing in cut up dried fruits like apricot, cherry, peach and mango into the lotus paste. 

This year, I will use freeze dried strawberry, raspberry or mango to see how the moon cakes will work out. When making my own moon cakes, I can control the flavors that goes into them and knowing that the flavors in the moon cakes are natural and not from some artificial flavorings. 

I also tried my hands on making snow skin durian moon cake last year. I will get to post that soon.

Baked Moon Cake Recipe (makes 10, 100g moon cakes)
(Adapted from happy home baking)
Ingredients:
130g plain flour/ Hong Kong flour
93g golden syrup
33ml canola oil
1/2 tsp alkaline water

Filling:
700g lotus paste
50g melon seed




Directions:

• Mix all the ingredients together and knead into a dough by hand.
• Cover the dough and let it rest for 15 min.
• Use the time to divide the lotus paste into 75g balls. Ratio of skin to filling is 1:3.
• Measure 25g of the dough. Flatten the dough and wrap it around the lotus paste. 
• Place it into the mould, to form the shape.
• While moulding the moon cakes, preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.
• Bake the moon cakes for 15 min. Take it out of the oven and brush the top and sides with egg wash and leave it out to cool for 15 min. 
• Return the moon cakes into the oven and bake for another 8 - 10 min until skin is golden brown.
• Remove the moon cake from the oven and let cool completely on a rack. When it is completely cool, store in air tight container at room temperature for at least 3 days before consuming. This is because the oil in the filling will be absorbed by the outer pastry to soften it. The process is known as '回油'.

Aren't they cute! Bunnies and piggies moon cakes.

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