Traditional Mooncake

Finally pluck up the courage to make lotus paste on Friday nite with much encouragement from my friend S. Took reference from Agnes Chang's VCD, began to feel discourage while removing away the brown skin of the lotus seed as it was quite difficult to wash off all the skin on every seed. Didn't manage to wash off all the brown skin or was it that i didn't boil the seed long enough. The other thing is that can't really get the same kind of texture as saw from the VCD.

Those who ate the mooncake say its fragrant and not so sweet as compare to the commercial ones, but maybe the paste was a bit dry so its abit crumble after cutting it into smaller pieces.

This round I use yochana's recipe to make the skin.

Lotus Paste

A)Ingredient:
600g lotus seeds (use xiang lian zi)
1 tbsp alkaline water

Method:
1) Add lotus seed into a pot of boiling water, add in alkaline water. Boil for 15min.
2) To test, take a seed and see if the outer skin can be remove easily.
3) Throw away the water in the pot. Put the seed into a pot of tap water, rub the seed with both hands, the skin should come off easily.
4) Cook the lotus seed till soft using the pressure cooker, the amount of water should be just cover the seeds, cook for about 15min.
5) Mash the hot cooked lotus seed into paste form using a food processor, takes about 2-3 min with a good machine.

B)Ingredient:
400g sugar
500g peanut oil
2 tbsp malt sugar

Method:
1) Add about 4-5 tbsp of sugar into wok (small fire), do not stir it, let the sugar melt (takes about 2-3min)
2) Add in the lotus paste, add in the rest of the sugar and keep stirring to prevent it from getting burnt, stir to the bottom to prevent paste from sticking.
3) Add the oil in 3 portion.
4) It take 45 min to cook the lotus paste. Paste should become light brown color.
5) Add oil and keep stirring.
6) Add malt sugar and stir continuously.
7) The paste will reach a stage where it does not stick to the bottom of wok, it will not drop from spoon when scoop up. Looks shiny.
8) Remove paste from wok and leave to cool. Leave the paste for 1 day before use.

Blueberry Buttermilk Pancake

Wanted to use the buttermilk before it expires, so made some pancake for breakfast. I use frozen blueberries as I always keep some in the freezer just in case I need it. Picture is abit ugly but taste was ok...
Ingredients:

1 cup plain flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 ¼ tsp baking powder
¼ tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
3 tbsp melted unsalted butter
125gm of blueberry

Maple syrup, honey, or jam and butter

Method:
1. In a medium bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Mix well. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, and melted butter to blend thoroughly. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and mix with the whisk till everything is just combined. Add in blueberry and mix till combined.
2. Heat up a frying pan, lightly oil the pan, spoon ¼ cup of batter onto pan, allowing space for the spreading. When the undersides of the pancakes are golden and the tops are lightly speckled with bubbles, flip the pan cakes over and cook until the other sides are lightly brown. Serve warm with maple syrup and butter or as desire.

Redwine Snowskin Mooncake

Saw fellow forumer doing this flavour, tried it too. But can't really taste the redwine compare to the choya flavour ones.

Choya Snowskin Mooncake

Found a small bottle of choya wine in the fridge, want to try out the new mould bought couple of weeks back, so made some snowskin with the mould in two flavour. Prefer this flavour to the rest...

Pandan Snow Skin Mooncake

Wanted to try the new mould bought last week, so made some pandan snowskin flavour wrap half with red bean paste and another half with pandan lotus paste filling...

Flaky Yam Paste Mooncake

My first attempt on such mooncake but was quite disappointed with the final result, suppose to deep fried the pastry in the final stage but the skin turn out very ugly, so bake the rest of after trying deep frying 4 pieces. The spiral was not as uniform as expected, think maybe due to trying to wrap too much filling with the amount of pastry. Recipe adapt from Agnes Chang's mooncake vcd...

Filling:
1.5 kg mashed yam
350g sugar
160g oil
150g almond nibbed (roasted at 180 deg for 15 min)

Method:
1) Steam the yam till soft, mash it with food-processor or the side of knife blade. Texture should be very smooth.
2) Add oil, sugar and yam into wok and stir fry till its smooth dough, about 15min.
3) Leave it aside to cool.

Skin:
A: Water Dough
240g plain flour (sifted)
1 tbsp castor sugar
70g shortening
1 tsp lime juice/lemon juice
130ml water

Method:
1) Add shortening and sugar to high protein flour.
2) Press the shortening into flour lightly. Make a well.
3) Add lemon juice into water. (Lemon juice help to make the flour become gluten easily)
4) Add lemon water into center of flour mixture.
5) Form into a dough, knead till a smooth dough.
6) Cover the dough and let it rest.

B: Oil dough
240g hongkong flour (sifted)
170g shortening

Method:
1) Add shortening to plain flour.
2) Gently press the shortening into flour with hand. Form into dough.
3) Roll into a long tube and divide into 8 pieces.
4) Roll into ball of each piece of dough.

To make the pastry skin

1) Roll water dough into long tube and divide into 8 pieces.
2) Flaten the water dough, wrap a piece of oil dough into water dough.
3) Roll the dough out from the middle into thin and long shape.
4) Do a swiss roll.
5) Turn the dough 90° and roll the dough flat into long thin oblong shape.
6) Fold it to half lengthwise.
7) Roll it very flat and long. Do swiss roll.
8) Let it rest for 10 min.

9) Add almond nibbed into yam paste and knead it to make the nibbed evenly distributed.
10) Divide yam into 16 portions and roll into a ball, each 100g of yam paste.

11) Flour table top. Hold the dough disc with circle facing left or right side. Cut the dough disc into half.
12) Press the dough with circle face up, press with palm to flatten it a little. Roll the dough disc side edge till very flat and thin.
13) Wrap the yam filling with the circle pattern facing out, and gently close it up.
14) Bake it at 180 deg C for 20-25min or till skin turn brown.

Longan Jelly Mooncake

Bought the mould last year but no chance to make till this year, didn't follow the recipe cos don't have some ingredient at home so did a little change, still it taste nice. Recipe from the mid autum mooncake book by one publisher...

Filling ingredients:
(A)
5gm Agar-agar powder
250ml longan syrup

(B)
150gm longan flesh (diced)

Pastry Ingredients:
(C)
7.5gm agar-agar powder
340ml water
70 gm castor sugar

(D)
100ml Evaporated milk
10gm custard powder
3 drops of yellow colouring

Method:
1. Bring (A) to boil till dissolved, add in (B), mix even.

2. Pour into small cup mould, let it set.

3. Bring (C) to boil till dissolved, add in (D) mix till even.

4. Pour into about half of mooncake mould, let it set.

5. Place the agar-agar from (2) into mooncake mould, then pour in rest of agar-agar in step 3. and place in fridge to chill.