Mooncake
Make it once and you'll never want to eat a store bought one again.
The ultimate home-baking challenge. This is not for the fainthearted wannaby home chef, but once you have done it once, it is quite easy to do it again. Here are my versions with Red Bean, Nuts and Green Tea fillings. To make them look like on the photo here, you’d need a mooncake mold.
Mooncake
Filling Options
Read Bean Paste Filling (Option 1)
- Add ++200g red azuki beans++ (read kidney beans or such won't work here) to sauce pan, add hot water to double height and boil until you can squeeze the beans between your fingers (about 20 min depending on the quality of your water). You may soak the beans beforehand over night to speed up the cooking time.
- Discard the water and leave the beans in the saucepan. Add ++80g sugar++, mash the bean-sugar mix (e.g. with a hand blender) until you have a smooth past.
- On lowest heat reduce the water content until you a trench through the beans without it closing on itself again. Let it cool while you are preparing the dough.
Grean Tea Paste Filling (Option 2)
- Add ++200g white butter beans++ to sauce pan, add hot water to double height and boil until you can squeeze the beans between your fingers (about 20 min depending on the quality of your water). You may soak the beans beforehand over night to speed up the cooking time.
- Discard the water and leave the beans in the saucepan. Add ++80g sugar++, ++1 generous tbsp matcha powder++, (green tea powder) and mash the bean-sugar-matcha mix (e.g. with a hand blender) until you have a smooth past.
- On lowest heat reduce the water content until you a trench through the beans without it closing on itself again. Let it cool while you are preparing the dough.
Nuts Filling (Option 3)
- Cut a mix of about ++100g nuts++ (any of your favorite will do) into small pieces to your liking. You may add some ++sesame seeds, pumpkin seeks or even candide ginger++ if you like.
- Briefly Roast in pan, oven or microwave.
- Mix into some read bean past to your preferred ratio.
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Ingredients
Here are the basic ingredients. See 'Notes' for some additional options.
Instructions
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How to put everything together:
Making the Mooncake Dough
- Mix the golden syrup and lye water in a large bowl, a fork works best. Not a big drama if you don't have lye water.
- Add the oil and mix well. again, a fork works best.
- Sieve the flour onto the syrup-oil mix. Mix well until you have a failry smooth past. Shortly knead with hand until you have smooth ball of dough. Cover the dough ball in plastic wrap and let it sit for about half hour. Note: You can use any other plain flour for this recipe.
- Cover a kitchen cutting board or working bench with some platic wrap and keep another plastic wrap for rolling the the dough at. You can use the kitchen scale to make this easier. Roll each portion into a ball.
Note: This recipe is made for 100g or 150g mooncake molds, repectively. That is, each mooncake is going to weigh 100g or 150g, respectively. The amounts given for the dough and filling below are given relative to the mooncake mold size. Use a kitchen scale for precise measuring.
Putting everything together
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C.
- Line a baking tray with baking paper.
- Mix egg yold with milk and stand aside for later.
- Measure 2/3 weight of dough for a single mooncake and place on your prepared kitchen board.
- Place plastic wrap over it, flatten the dough and roll out to a round flat piece of about 3-4 mm thickness.
- Measure 1/3 weight of filling for a single mooncake, form into small ball and place onto the dough round.
- Carefully wrap the dough around the filling and make sure there are no holes or cracks. It is not so important if there are patches that have a somewhat thicker wrapping than others.
- Place upside of your wrapped ball down into the mooncake mould.
- Slowly press your mooncake mold directly onto the prepared baking tray. Press firm to make sure mooncake pattern is evenly and solidly imprinted on the surface.
- Release the mould and slowly lift it off the mooncake. The mooncake should gradually slip up by itself.
- Brush the mooncakes with the egg tolk. Be carefull not to clogg the pattern to much. You make lift off some of the excess egg yolk with some kitchen tissue.
- Once all mooncakes are done, bake in oven at 180C for 10-12 minutes. Place on a wire rack to let them cool for a few minutes, brush again with some egg yolk. Remove excess egg yolk.
Note
Eat straight away when cool or store them in an airtight container in the fridge for a couple of days. The typical dark golden mooncake color will appear a day after baking and will become more dark the longer they are stored.
cake, organic, wholemeal, GF
