Miss CoCo's Virgin Mooncake

Took a leap of faith and made my very first batch of mooncakes. Well, the first batch was made from a recipe I read on the newspaper, by some chef at Capella hotel. No offence, but it turned out like crap. Looks like I still have lots to learn, I'll summarize all my learning points at the end of the blog.

Since I've already bought a whole kilo of white lotus paste, might as well try again, so I searched the web for a recipe for traditional mooncakes, (only from trustworthy bloggers this time) and found this recipe from Anhsfoodblog. Turns out quite ok, but I did make some slight adjustments.

Here's what we need:

Skin:
120g golden syrup
40g cooking oil
160g plain flour
½ tsp Alkaline water (or lye water) (I don't like)
¼ tsp baking soda

Filling:
6 no. salted egg yolk, steamed (didn't bother to buy them)
white lotus paste

Eggwash:
1 egg beaten with a little milk

1. Preparing the skin - Combine the golden syrup, cooking oil together. Mix in the plain flour and stir until you have a smooth paste. Cover, leaving the dough to rest for a few hours.
2. Filling portion - Big mooncake - wrap 50g : filling 130g Small mooncakes wrap 25g : filling 35g
3. Wrapping – this steps requite a bit of practice. Make sure when you wrap the filling, no additional flour is around. Start by flatten dough slightly with your hand, then put the filling ball in the middle. Gently wrap the dough all around the filling with smoothing and rounding motion. Be gentle not to break the skin.
4. Shaping – Gently dust the mould with flour, the tap off any excess. Very lightly, dust the ball with a little flour. Press the mooncake ball into the mould. Knock the mould to release the mooncake. Repeat with the rest.
5. Baking - Place the mooncakes onto the baking tray, lined with baking paper. Bake them in a preheated 200C oven for 7-10 minutes.
6. Take the tray out, and wait until the cakes cool down for 30 minutes. Use a pastry brush, brush a light coat of eggwash onto the mooncake (just the top, don’t brush on the side of the cake). Return the tray to the oven, and bake for further 10-12 minutes or until golden brown.
7. MOST IMPORTANT - Let the mooncake rest for at least 3 days before consumption. In Cantonese, we called it 出油, where the oil from the lotus paste and yolk would slowly seep into the mooncake skin, making it shiny and soft.

So with that in mind, next year when you are buying mooncakes, please don't ask the vendor if it's fresh, because there's no such thing as a "fresh" mooncake. Freshly baked mooncakes are hard and dry and terrible in taste!

So with that in mind, here are my notes for making home-made mooncakes:

1. Prepare early, minimum 1.5 months! As mentioned earlier, you need to keep freshly baked mooncakes for at least 3 days. Also, traditional mooncakes need a special sugar syrup that's made at least a few days to a few months in advance. The sugar syrup would darken over time and the brown syrup would contribute to the rich brown colour of the skin. My dad used to own a bakery and they would make the syrup at least 6 months in advance! Seriously!
2. Add salted egg yolk. It doesn't matter if you like yoke or not, you should add it anyway. The oil from the yolk would slowly seep into the skin, adding flavour and improving texture.
3. Use good quality paste. On top of flavour, good quality paste also have higher oil content, so again, contributing to the oiling of your mooncake skin.
4. Dough should be wet. If your dough is wet and damn difficult to wrap the paste, you probably got it right. They never said it was easy! 
5. Eggwash - Go easy! If you brush on too much, the delicate pattern on the mooncake would be distorted.

I guess that's it. I've definitely underestimated the complexity of making a traditional baked mooncake. It's so simple yet difficult all at the same time! I would learn from this and make even better ones next year. But seriously, if you aren't a baking enthusiast, it's not worth the effort. Go buy a box and enjoy! Leave all these craziness to the crazy ones. :)

By the way, I'm submitting this very special post to Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011). Hope all readers enjoy my little post!

Mooncakes 2011

Mooncake festival is here again! This year we bought our mooncake from Vivo City, rather than the usual fair at Takashimaya. As usual, we tried out most of the mooncakes at the fair and finally decided on two brands. For my parents, Cobby bought from Huating, Orchard Hotel. This year, I bought a box from Mandarin for my mother-in-law. She doesn't like mooncakes, so I've never bought her a box before. But I just wanted to buy something for her. What the heck, we can all eat it after the dinner right?

Anyway, other than the taste, I think that the packaging makes a whole lot of difference when it comes to mooncake shopping. Afterall, the best mooncakes taste very similar. If, as a reputable hotel's restaurant, your mooncake does taste like crap, I think you can just jump off from the hotel itself. So, the deciding factor, after the taste, would be how pretty your packaging is. Afterall, everybody buys mooncakes for SOMEONE else, looks matters.

Orchard Hotel, Huating
Baked mooncake with macadamia nuts and white lotus paste S$42.00

My sister bought a box for my parents from Peninsula Hotel, baked mooncakes with red lotus paste.

There was quite a debate over who's mooncake tasted better, but as my dad had a sweeter tooth, he claimed that the red lotus paste tasted better. He said that their lotus paste is more oily, making it more smooth.

He claims the one on the left is more shiny... can you tell?

Hubby stuck with my choice and said that mine tasted better. As for my brother, well, it all tasted the same to him. -_- Me? I think both tasted great, but different. Hey, different type of lotus paste! Anyway, next year I'm buying red lotus paste mooncake for dad. -_-

For my mother in law, I bought this:
Mandarin Orchard
Baked mooncake with macadamia nut and low sugar white lotus paste, S$50.00

Like I said, I've never bought her mooncakes before, but turned out to be a good decision as the mooncake was delicious! We were blown away by the giant macadamia nuts inside the mooncake.

Usually they would chop it up into small bits, but Mandarin left it in quite big chunks. And it was toasted, so it was very fragrant! It was perfect with the mooncakes, in fact, it tasted like a nutty candy bar. Very different from a regular mooncake, so I really liked it.

All in all, a very satisfying mooncake festival. :)

Ritz Carlton Mooncake

Hubby and I tasted the whole exhibition hall of mooncakes at Taka before finally deciding on this year's choice of mooncakes for my parents. We are traditionalists, so we always buy white lotus paste and not all those fancy, strange, new flavours.

Not only must it be tasty, because it's a gift, the packaging was very important to me too! I think Ritz has the nicest box this year, perfect as a gift for my parents! :)

Home's Favourite Durian Mooncake

Bought this at the Takashimaya annual Mooncake fair. At first I thought that the durian filling was ice cream, as it had a icy, creamy texture. The salesgirl explained that they just brought it out of the freezer, but it's actually pure D24 Durian!

I had never bought durian mooncake before but I was attracted by it's pretty packaging. It comes in individual styrofoam box to keep the mooncake cool.



When you eat it immediately after taking out of the freezer, it taste like durian ice cream seriously. But give it a few more minutes to thaw out and you get this beautiful, creamy, a little more fibrous texture.



Basically you get to enjoy eating durian but don't have to deal with the thorny husk, messy hands and seed. YUMS!

http://www.homesfavourite.com/