Rose Red Wine Snowy Mooncake

Rose Red Wine Snowy Mooncake, with rose and lotus seed paste as stuffing, offers the perfect balance of sour and sweet tastes. After refrigeration, it is one of my favorites.  The chewiness of its snowy tender skin and its unique fillings of sweet Rose stuffing and White Lotus Paste can truly excite your taste buds.

Since it is a snowy mooncake (not required for baking), let's refresh the steps of making its 'snowy crust'.   To prepare for flavored (red wine) ice skin mooncake dough, please refer to the materials and step-by-step instructions of 'snowy crust making'.

Step-by-Step Instruction:

1.  Raw Material : 

     a.  Mooncake dough (snowy moon cake flour 200g, white sugar 50g, red wine 320ml, oil 50g). 

     b.  Rose stuffing 480g, White Lotus stuffing 480g (good for 16 pieces of moon cakes);  

     ** Note: All raw materials can be purchased in bakery ingredient shops.

2.  Mix cake-skin materials evenly; then, place it into a steamer and steam for 20 min.  Stir well until it turns into a pink bulk (as shown in figure 2) and cool it.

3.  Prepare raw pastry 40g (snowy cake skin), Rose stuffing 30g and White Lotus stuffing 30g. Split them in 3 groups as shown in figure 3.

4.  Pack White Lotus stuffing into the Rose stuffing.

5.  Then, wrap it into the snowy cake skin.

6.  Round them into balls, and press them into the mold.  After releasing them from molds, refrigerating them for several hours before eating.

Colorful Snowy Mooncake

To add more colors to your mid-Autumn Festival (or Mooncake Festival), I am proudly presenting this colorful snowy mooncake!  The colors of its crust come from lemon, chocolate, and green tea powder.  What's better is its rich, thick and delicious filling inside!  

Let's have a look:

The filling inside:   osmanthus, lotus seed paste, and salted egg yolk.

Since it is a snowy mooncake (not required for baking), let's refresh the steps of making its 'snowy crust'.   To prepare for flavored ice skin mooncake dough, please refer to the materials and step-by-step instructions of 'snowy crust' making.

Materials for 16 servings (100g mooncake): 

1. Flavored ice skin mooncake dough, each 200g (lemon, green tea, chocolate), 
2. Red lotus seed paste:  500g
3. Almond slices:  half-cup, 
4. Osmanthus sugar:  2 tablespoons  

Step-by-Step Instruction:

1. Take 5g of ice skin mooncake dough for each flavor (15g in total)

2. Make it round and flat

3. Have red lotus seed paste blended with almond slices and osmanthus sugar, 

    Enclose 1 salted egg yolk in the red lotus seed paste (30g),

    Wrap the whole thing with flavored mooncake dough (from step 2) slowly

    Enclose the stuffing in the dough and seal very carefully (step 3).

4. Press the whole thing into the mooncake mold

5. Release the mooncake, and store in refrigerator for few hours.

6. Eat it!

Starbucks Mooncake

I bought a Starbucks mooncake press, and made a few 'Starbucks mooncakes', in a very novel way!

Syrup and honey are usually the best options for making moon cakes.  Guess what!  Today, I used chocolate sauce (instead of syrup)!  

Its texture turned out to be OK.  It didn't explode nor turned blurry.  =)    The mooncake tasted so tender and soft... And, the crust turned out to be MUCH SOFTER.  OMG! 

Check it out how it's made!

Materials:

Step-by-Step Instructions :

1. mooncake dough: low-gluten flour 100g , chocolate sauce 100g, oil 30g; mix well until it turns into batter (figure 1).
2. Wrap the candied fruit with 30g of jujube paste - this is your stuffing (figure 2)
3. Have the mooncake dough(30g) wrap around the stuffing prepared in step 2 (figure 3)
4. Round it into a ball (figure 4)
5. Apply some flour onto the Starbucks mold, and press 'the ball' into the mold. 
6. Set oven to 180°C / 356°F and bake for 20 minutes.  Then, let's eat !

How to make the crust of snowy mooncake?

These non-baked, chilled mooncakes usually come with two types of crusts: 

1. Glutinous rice: A crust with texture similar to that of a mochi. These moon cakes are known colloquially as "snowskin mooncakes" or "ice-skin mooncakes" (冰皮 or 冰皮月餅).
2. Jelly: A crust made of mixtures such as agar, gelatin, or konjac and flavored with a wide variety of fruit flavorings.

Ok, let's get to the step-by-step of making the 'snowy skin' or 'snowy crust' (the crust of mooncake).

Materials for snowy crust:

1. glutinous rice flour 45g
2. rice powder 35g
3. wheat starch 70g
4. milk 160ml
5. white sugar 40g
6. oil 20ml

Step-by-Step Instruction:

1. Put milk, oil, and white sugar into a container, and stir well

2. Add glutinous rice flour, rice powder and wheat starch powder into the container

    Stir the mixture into a batter 

3. Leave it on table for 15 min; then, filter the batter

    Steam the filtered batter for 15-20 min.  Keep stirring until it is done.

    Leave it and let it cool down.

4. After cooling down, round it into small balls (make each ball weigh ~30g)

    Wrap the stuffing (filling) with the ball.

     ** note:  You may flavor the crust (snowy skin) with green tea powder, chocolate powder..etc., as you like.

5.  Sprinkle glutinous rice flour on the surface of mold, place the ball in the mold, and press it.

Enjoy your Snowy Mooncake!

Traditional MoonCake (Cantonese style)

Traditional moon cake or the Cantonese-style moon cake is the most commonly seen type of mooncake in North America.  It consists of a thin, tender skin enveloping a sweet and a rich thick filling of lotus seed paste.

I made each moon cake about 100g, so we can have more substantial bites.   =)

Raw Material:  

1. flour 500g, 
2. syrup 350g, 
3. oil (lard) 150g, 
4. salt 5g, 
5. Potassium carbonate 10g, 
6. Lotus Seed Paste and Jujube Paste moon cake fillings 2kg

Step-by-Step Instruction : 

1. Blend potassium carbonate, syrup, salt and oil altogether; stir well.
2. add the cake flour, mix well and cover with plastic wrap for 1 hour.
3. Lotus seed paste 80g as stuffing (I packed a few grains of pork meat as well).  Use 30g of dough, to wrap around the stuffing
4. Apply some flour onto the press; press the cakes into molds and release them.
5. Preheat oven to 175°C / 347°F, spray some water on the surface of moon cakes, and bake for 20 minutes (After baking for 5 min, take cakes out and brush cakes with egg mixture; then, put the moon cakes back to oven and keep baking for 15 minutes).

*  You may use Jujube paste (Zaoni walnut) as stuffing, or even blend it with lotus seed paste, according to you preference.