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. 

Mochi - An Healthy Alternative to Traditional Mooncakes

Some people might complain, those moon cakes made of thick and dense fillings wrapped with a 'lard-ful' crust may not be healthy.  Unfortunately, they surely taste delicious especially during the Mid-Autumn Festival..  What to do?!

A Taiwanese friend recommended me to have mochi, instead of mooncake, for a healthier 'mooncake festival'..   Well.., I am not sure if I can give up on mooncakes, but I gave it a try anyway when I visited Taiwan.  

Here is how it looks like:

Mochi

What is mochi anyway?

Mochi is usually smaller than a mooncake, and tastes very.. very... chewy.  It is more like a snowy mooncake (aka. ice-skin mooncake).  It shares very similar filling or stuffing that a mooncake has; however, it contains much less fat.

Some mochi even has fresh fruits as its filling!    Mooncakes rarely have fruits as their fillings.

Green Tea Mochi

Strawberry Mochi

The good thing is that you can order a box of Mochi online!   Finally and luckily... I don't' need to fly all the way visiting Taiwan to get a box of mochi now.   

It's called 'ZengJi Mochi' (曾记 mochi).  It comes with 30 pieces with 5 different flavors in a box.

Best Taiwanese Mochi

Where to get good molds for mooncakes?

A friend was asking me WHERE exactly can people get mooncake mold / press in the USA.

It used to be a tough question, but nowadays you can get pretty much EVERYTHING online from Amazon.

Here, I picked some good-quality non-sticky silica-made mooncake molds from Amazon that I used before. The left one "World Cuisine Silicone Mold" is the best among all. while the 'Floral mold' adds an elegant aura toward each of your mooncake.

Check it out and have fun :

   

Where to Buy Mooncake in the USA?

Say, if you are tired of making your own mooncakes (unfortunate new to hear), where to buy mooncakes in the US??

Here are a few best mooncakes available online at the  following links:

Kee Wha Bakery  (one of the best brands)

They sell many different types of mooncakes, including mooncakes made with lotus seed paste, red bean paste and green bean paste. They deliver to the Continental United States, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico and several other countries. (Mooncakes are available only during the Mid-Autumn Festival season). The website includes addresses and telephone numbers for its California stores.

Ruby Mooncake

8-star Mooncake

4 Flavors Assorted GiftPack

Lower-Sugar Mooncake           (White Lotus Seed Paste)

Sheng Kee mini-Mooncake

Best Lotus Seed Paste Mooncakes

Say, if you are tired of making your own mooncakes (unfortunate new to hear), where to buy mooncakes in the US??

Here are a few best mooncakes available online in the USA:

Kee Wha Bakery  (one of the best brands)
They sell many different types of mooncakes, including mooncakes made with lotus seed paste, red bean paste and green bean paste. They deliver to the Continental United States, Hawaii, Canada, Mexico and several other countries. (Mooncakes are available only during the Mid-Autumn Festival season). The website includes addresses and telephone numbers for its California stores.

Kee Wah Mooncake
White Lotus Seed Paste
with 2 yolks

Kee Wah Mooncake
White Lotus Seed Paste
with 1 yolk

Kee Wah Lower-Sugar
Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake
(no egg yolk)

 

Kee Wah Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake
(no egg yolk)

Best Fruity-flavored Mooncakes

Say, if you are tired of making your own mooncakes (unfortunate new to hear), where to buy mooncakes in the US??

Fruity-flavored mooncakes are rarer in the market.

Here, I picked few best fruity-flavored mooncakes that I tasted before :

 

Kee Wah Mooncake

( Pineapple Paste and Walnuts )

     

Durian Mhonthong Pulp and Lotus Seeds

   

Fruit & Nutes with 1 egg yolk

 

 (Hong Kong style) Durian Paste Mooncake

   

Sheng Kee Taro Mooncake

台湾经典月饼食谱（附傻瓜式图解）

中秋节快到了，在此特别推荐一本食谱 － 台湾经典月饼食谱，尤其是向海外留学的学子们，即使没有家人在身边，也要提起精神来，和朋友齐聚做月饼，过个温馨的中秋节！

其实事发有因，昨天朋友送了一盒名贵的君悦月饼给我尝尝，果然奢侈！油脂量也很"奢侈"，让我昨晚难以入眠。。 其实自己做月饼不但能自行调整油脂甜度，还比较好吃。

台湾经典月饼食谱（附傻瓜式图解）是台湾的烘培名人－ 陈师傅，针对台湾地方特色所整理出来的14款经典月饼，除了传统月饼，还有冰皮月饼，红酒玫瑰月饼，麻薯月饼，水晶月饼，红麴酥月饼等！ 

主要内容包括了制作月饼的（1）基础知识技能；（2）师傅示范篇；（3）月饼制做实战篇

台湾经典月饼食谱
（点图购买）

食谱内列有材料及制作流程，从最基本的面团处理，搓揉手法，到饼皮调味，内馅制做都是一步一步的解说，每一步都有附图片的，很容易上手！ 

连包馅都这么啰嗦，真的有妈妈在教的感觉。。

想做台式月饼的人，这里有线上试读版哦！ http://sites.google.com/site/mooncakerecipe/

台湾经典月饼的［电子书完整版］附上了更详细的图文解说，可以在此线上购买：
https://tinypay.me/~M6IAbiH/

最后希望大家都能做出健康的月饼与好友家人分享！一起共度最特别的中秋佳节！

让我们立即烘培迎中秋吧！

祝大家中秋节快乐～！！！

Best Mooncakes Collection

Lotus Seed MooncakeNuts & Ham Mooncake Egg Yolk Mooncake Kee Wah Ruby Mooncake Kee Wah 8-Star Giftbox White Lotus Seed Paste Mooncake lower sugar mooncake Sheng Kee mini-Mooncake Sheng Kee Taro MooncakeDurian & Lotus Seed Mooncake Fruits & Nuts MooncakeSquare Floral Mold Non-Stick Silicon Floral Mold Round Mold with 4 patterns