Happy Mid Autumn Festival

Happy Mid Autumn Festival to All!
Manage to squeeze out some time to make traditional mooncake and snowskin mooncake.
On saturday morning I've done some snowskin mooncake with pandan paste with some chocolate pearl mixed in the paste.
As the lotus paste I made couple of weeks back was spoil when I need it to make mooncake, thinking that its still more economical to bake mooncake myself, last minute went to buy 2 kg of white lotus paste and did 14 pcs of traditional mooncakes. The mould is not so sharp, thus the goldfishes are not obvious :(...

Snow skin Mooncake with pandan paste & chocolate pearl

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011)...

Traditional Mooncake with Lotus paste & Macademia nut

Making Mooncake skin,

Ingredients

300g golden syrup (available at baking supply shops)

90g peanut oil

3 tsp alkaline water

400g plain flour

Method:

1. Sieve flour in a big bowl and set a side. Mix golden syrup, peanut oil and alkaline water in together in a bowl. Add syrup mixture into flour and mix together using a spatula till well combined. 

2. Cover the sticky dough with cling wrap and let it rest for 2 hours.

Making of Mooncake

1. Toast preferred nuts or melon seed till golden brown, set aside to cool. 

2. Mix nut into lotus paste and knead till well combined-I use macadamia nuts so I chopped it smaller for better bite. 

3. Weigh the lotus paste and 40g of mooncake pastry inorder to determine the paste weight require for the mould*. Roll paste into a ball and set aside on a tray.

4. Dust hand with some flour, take 40g of mooncake pastry roll into a ball, flaten it on one palm, place on ball of lotus paste on pastry, wrap paste in pastry. Dust mould with flour. Put the wrapped filling in the mould and press it flat. Knock the four sides of the mould to loosen the mooncake, place palm under the wrapped filling and unmould shaped filling onto palm, place it on baking tray. Keep a distance between each piece of mooncake so that it will be fully baked.

5. Place mooncake into preheated 160 deg C oven. Bake for 15min, remove and let it cool. Brush with egg wash then put it back into oven and bake till 15min or till golden brown. 

6. Rest the mooncake for 2 days before eating it.

* There are various mould sizes. Wrap the lotus paste with cling wrap, then press it into the mould. After deduct the weight of the pastry, only the weight of the filling remains. If want to add salted egg yolk, deduct the same weight of paste and replace with yolk.