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How to Make Moon Cake

 How to Make Moon Cake

The mooncake recipe we used came from the following website: http://www.kitchenbowl.com/recipe/kVtFBXmyw1/mini-lotus-paste-mooncakes

The recipe was altered to address

  1. More easily accessible honey (instead of harder-to-find golden syrup)
  2. Vegetable oil (instead of peanut oil due to kid peanut allergy)
  3. Baking soda (instead harder-to-find alkaline water)

 

Mooncake Skin

Instructions

Step 1

Start by preparing mooncake skin dough. First, whisk together honey, vegetable oil and baking soda until they are thoroughly blended. Then add in flour.

Start by preparing mooncake skin dough. First, whisk together golden syrup, groundnut oil and alkaline water until they are thoroughly blended. Then add in flour.

Step 2

Using a spatula, mix and fold in the flour until a soft and sticky dough is formed. Cover with cling wrap and put in refrigerator to chill before working on it. This will make it easier to portion out the skin later and colder dough holds the mold patterns better.

Mooncake Filling

We used pre-made red bean paste from Japanese supermarket. Typically this paste is made from red bean, sugar, and water. To use it as a filling, we had to make it into a thicker, denser filling.

  1. Heat red bean paste under low flame.
  2. Add 1/4 stick of butter (or lard if you want traditional Chinese method). This helps give it the necessary oils to help keep it flavorfully soft but stiff to form.
  3. Continue to stir to make sure not to burn the red bean paste.
  4. Purpose is to cook off more water so the red bean becomes a thicker paste, almost like very thick mashed potato consistency.

 

Forming the Mooncake

We ordered this inexpensive plastic mold presses from Amazon

  1. Depending on if you are making 50g or 100g mooncake shape, portion out dough skin & red bean filling accordingly.
  2. Roll the dough skin into a ball and then flatten to form a circular disk.
  3. Roll smaller ball of red bean filling and place in middle of the circular dough skin disk.
  4. Carefully wrap the skin around the red bean filling.
  5. Put this skin-wrapped red bean ball into the mold press.
  6. Carefully push down to apply the pattern, and then push out the formed mooncake.

 

Baking Mooncake

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Bake mooncake for about 10 minutes.
  3. Take out and brush outside skin with egg yolk (this will give it the nice golden brown texture).
  4. Put back in the oven to bake for another 10-15 minutes.
  5. Take out to cool.

 

WHEN TO EAT MOONCAKE

Generally mooncake is best eaten 1-2 days after it is baked. The butter (or lard) and water moisture in the filling help soften the harder & drier “dough skin” to give it the characteristic softness of mooncake.

You can however eat it immediately if you want.

 

MORE INFORMATION

Here are some other websites with more information (and pictures):

How To Make Traditional Lotus Seed Mooncakes

Here is why we used HONEY to substitute for GOLDEN SYRUP.

The Best Golden Syrup Substitute List You Need to Start Baking

Here is information for making SESAME PASTE FILLING
(also shows pictures of how to form mooncakes with the plastic molds press)

https://omnivorescookbook.com/traditional-mooncake