Mid-Autumn festival or Mooncake Festival falls on October 3rd in the year 2009 ,that is this coming Saturday.Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, the Chinese celebrate "zhong qiu jie."Moon cakes are typically round, symbolizing the full round moon of the mid-autumn festival. They are usually made with four egg yolks, representing the four phases of the moon, and are sweet, filled with sweet bean or lotus seed paste.This year I'm not into baking mooncake but I still have some lotus paste leftover in freezer. While I was blog hopping I saw happyflour make beautiful snow skin mooncake posted in her blog. I never try to make any snow skin mooncake before but would love to try..I found out snow skin mooncake is 10 times easier than traditional baked mooncake but my 1st experiment making snow skin is not really up to the expectation or pretty at all.I realised I didn't knead and press the dough hard enough into the mould .The down side is I was too excited to take the photos right away,didn't let the tapioca flour sit on the mooncake for awhile first..Well...you will see some white powder still on the surface..I also adpated the recipe slightly to suit me..If you're looking for the original recipe ,hop over to Happyflour !!
Ingredients:
105g kao fen (cooked glutinous rice flour)
30g shortening
95g icing sugar
1tbsp fresh milk/evaporated milk
100g water ( I used 160 g water)
60g pandan juice ( I replaced with water)
1/2 tsp pandan essence ( I used 2 drops)
Filling:
400g lotus paste
50g tapioca flour/Hong Kong flour(steamed for 10mins, cool and sift twice
Method for Dough:
1. Sift kao fen and icing sugar together.
2. Rub in shortening into the flour mixture until it resemble bread crumb.
3. Mix all the liquid and essence together.
4. Add in liquid mixture into the flour mixture and mix to form soft dough. Do not overmix. (You may need more or less liquid depend on the quality of the flour. Dough will look rough but soft in texture.)
5. Cover the dough and rest in the fridge for 15 mins.(I leave it on the counter since my kitchen is cold)
Filling:
1. Divide the lotus paste into 10 portions of 40g each.( mine is about 100 gm each)
2. Roll them into balls.
Shaping:
1. Divide dough into 10 portions of 37g each.(mine is about 80 g each)
2. Dust the surface, rolling pin and mould lightly with flour.
3. Roll out the dough, leave the centre slightly thicker than the edge.
4. Wrap the dough with the lotus paste and seal the edges.
5. Press into the mould and plunge it out slowly.
6. Use a brush to brush away excess flour around the mooncake.
7. Chill in the fridge and serve.
Note:
Weight of the skin and filling depend on the size of the mould.
The recipe warned not to over mix the dough,so I didn't really mix the dough enough.No wonder the skin look not smooth at all..
I follow the recipe weighting the lotus paste but realised that my mould is bigger need more dough and paste in order to fill up the mould..
steamed tapioca flour for brushing
wooden mould is not suitable for snowskin mooncake*sigh*
too bad I only have one plastic mould..
