This is one the traditional moon cake for Mid-Autumn Festival. Moon cake is not really my favorite, but you have to have it for the festival. So every year, I try to bake some to share with friends.
Ingredients:
Dough: 100 gram all-purpose flour, 5 gram dry milk, 75 gram homemade syrup, 25 gram cooking oil, 1 gram potassium carbonate solution.
Filling: red bean paste, salted egg yolk
Topping: 1 raw egg yolk, 1 tsp egg white, 1 tsp water, mix well.
Tool: moon cake mold
Method:
Dough:
1. Mix syrup, cooking oil and potassium carbonate solution, beat until mix well.
I used homemade syrup which was made just for moon cake, recipe will follow. If you don’t have it, you can use store-bought, but recommend darker color and thick ones.
2. Sift flour, add with dry milk into syrup mixture, mix well until form a smooth dough.
3. Set aside for about 1 hour.
Filling:
1. Heat up skillet, no oil need, pour red bean paste in.
2. Stir fry red bean paste on medium low heat until you think it’s thick enough to shape.
3. Transfer to a container, let it cool.
Wrapping:
1. Decide the size and weight for each portion. My mold is small, so divided the dough into 12 equal pieces, about 15 gram each, red bean paste was 30 gram.
2. Separate dough and red bean paste.
3. Flat red bean paste (or break it), roll it over the egg yolk, form a ball with egg yolk inside.
4. Flat dough, use your fingers and hand to push/squeeze to make the dough cover filling completely.
Dough is really soft and tender, easy to operate.
5. Put the moon cake ball with a thin flour coating in mold to shape it.
6. Pre-heat oven to 350ºF.
7. Sprinkle moon cake with water, bake for 5 minutes, then take out, thinly coated with topping, bake for another 15 minutes.
8. After moon cakes are cool, put in a sealed container, set for at least one day then serve.
Fresh baked moon cake has hard shell. Shell with turn tender after settling. Normally takes at least a day, sometime 2-3 days.
