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.