Are you trying to make moon cakes from home but have a hard problem getting ingredients such as salted duck yolks and potassium alkaline water? well in this recipe, I am showing you how you can make it without them!
What are moon cakes?
Mooncakes are delectable, round pastries that hold a special place in Chinese culture and cuisine. These sweet delicacies are linked to the Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, which is one of the national holidays that is celebrated by Chinese communities around the world. The annual festival falls on the 15th day of the eighth month in the lunar calendar, which typically lands in September or early October. On this day, families would gather together and enjoy quality time with each other while eating mooncakes.
Moon cakes come in various shapes, sizes, flavors, and textures, but the most well-known today are the traditional Hongkong style mooncakes and the snow-skin moon cakes. If you want to learn more about snow skin mooncakes, you can watch the mooncake tutorial that I made last year on Tiktok! I also explained the romantic and iconic love story that is related to mid-autumn festive and moon cakes. Most of the time, Mooncakes feature an intricate design on the surface often showing Chinese characters or design that is related to the moon, such as bunnies, moons, or beautiful landscapes.
Fun fact: The movie "Over the moon" is based off mooncake and mid-autumn festival!
What does mooncake taste like?
The traditional mooncake is often times made with lotus seeds as the filling, along with salted duck yolks as well. Other popular fillings include red bean paste(which is what we are using today in this recipe), nuts, dried fruits, custards, and even chocolates! Therefore the fillings are rich, dense, and smooth. In this recipe, we are creating a simpler version of the traditional mooncake since there are quite a lot of ingredients that we are not able to gather in some parts of the world, such as salted duck yolks and potassium alkaline water that is used in the traditional recipe.
If you are having a hard time finding ingredients such as the alkaline potassium water and salted duck yolk where you live, this will be the perfect recipe for you!
Main supplies that you must have for a mooncake recipe!
Different fillings you can choose from in this recipe:
Preparation Process
Start by whisking together 1 egg and 2 egg yolks, milk, flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl
in a none stick pan, sift the batter through and add in butter, keep on stirring until a solid paste form
roll them into small balls and freeze them for later use
make the substitute of lye water(potassium alkaline water by mixing together hot water and baking soda)
in a bowl add in oil and syrup, baking soda water, and then stir it up until syrup and oil is completely combined, and then add in flour and using your hand, kneel into a smooth dough (you can add the pandan extract or whatever flavoring or food coloring you want in this step)
separate the mooncake skin dough of 30g each and flatten it out to a thin layer, as for fillings, wrap the frozen salted duck custard in red bean paste and then close it off with the mooncake skin
dust the mooncake mold and press the mooncake into the mold, gently tap the mold for the beautiful mooncake to reveal
Spray the surface of the mooncake with water to avoid cracking during the baking stage, place it in the oven for 5 minutes in 390F, and prepare an egg wash mixture
Tips for success!
I have tried various recipes to finally settle with the one we have today so I will be giving you guys my personal tips when making the mooncakes and how I have failed to make them in my previous attempts
- wrap your mooncake skin dough in plastic wrap and let it chill in the fridge before using it so that it has time to set for better consistency
- wear food safety gloves!!!! this is so important as it makes the work way easier and cleaner when everything doesn’t stick on your hand
- always dust your working source with some flour so that the dough doesn’t stick to working materials (mooncake mold, chopping board, etc)
- if you want your mooncake to turn out a little more vibrant and gold-colored, but don’t have the potassium-alkaline water that is required in most recipes, feel free to add some orange food colorings to make up for it!
- test how many grams of dough that you will need with your mooncake mold as every mold is differently sized. do so by just filling up your mooncake mold with mooncake skin dough and weighing it to see how many grams of ingredients you will need for each of your mooncakes. for example, mine came out to be exactly 66grams, meaning that I will have to make each of my mooncake to weigh 66 grams in order for my mold to fit.
- Freeze your “salted duck yolks” custards after rolling them into a ball and you’ll get a more rounded shape after it is baked and cut open
- DO NOT brush on too much egg wash, as it can cause the pattern on the top to sink due to too much moisture, just brush on a very gentle layer of it
- Bake your mooncake in higher heat for the first 5 minutes for the skin to set, and then 10 more minutes at a lower temperature after you egg-washed them for the golden color to come through.
Storage!
- After your mooncake is done baking, you can enjoy it as it is, or it is way better to consume on the next day as the oil in the skin will regenerate and create a more smooth and glossy surface. not only they will look fantastic but they also will taste better, richer, and smoother.
- simply store them in the fridge after they have cooled down in an air tight container, they should last up to one week as they don’t contain any perspectives like the store bought ones
Traditional mooncake
Makes total of 12 moon cakes of 66g each
Ingredients
Moon cake skin (30grams each)
- 50g neutral oil ( peanut oil, vegetable oil, soybean oil, sunflower oil etc)
- 160g Syrups ( i recommend using golden syrup for the best result because of its color, but you can also use corn syrup, and even honey)
- 4g baking soda water (this is a substitute for the potassium alkine water that is required for most traditional mooncake recipes) simply mix 1g of baking soda with 3g of HOT boiling water
- 235g All purpose flour
- 3g pandan extract
- orange food coloring( optional)
Salted yolk custard filling
- 1 egg + 2 egg yolks
- 40g sugar
- 120g milk
- 20g flour
- 20g corn starch
- 28g butter or 1/4 of a stick
- 9g salt
500g Red bean paste (30g each)
Egg wash
- 1 egg
- 15g water
12 Raspberries
Instructions
- start making our salted egg yolk custard by combining 1 egg, 2 egg yolks, sugar, salt , milk, flour, corn starch in a bowl, whisk it well and then shift it for a smoother consistency
- in a nonstick pan, add in the salted egg yolk batter, along with the butter, and keep on stringing it until a dough forms
- roll the salted egg yolk custards into small balls of about 7g each and leave them in the freezer to set (you can skip this step if you want your filling just to be salted egg custard+rasberry)
- now let's make the mooncake skin by combining oil, corn starch and baking soda water in a bowl, whisking it up until the oil has been completely dissolved into the syrups
- add in all-purpose flour and first mix them together with a spatula, once the dough starts to come together a bit, wear food safety glue and start kneeing them into a playdough consistency dough, you can add your pandan flavoring or any flavoring of your choice in this step
- wrap the dough in plastic wrap and then leave the moon cake skin dough in the fridge for at least 1 hour for the dough to rest
- once your dough has been set, separate the dough into 12-13 pieces, making sure that they are around 30g for each.
- by this point, your salted duck yolk custards should be ready to be wrapped
- roll 30g of red bean paste into a ball and flatten it out, then place the salted yolk custard in the center and wrap it up
- flatten the moon cake skin dough and carefully wrap the red bean and egg custard filling until there can be no red bean seen and then roll it into a ball shape again
- dust it with flour
- using a mooncake mold, carefully pry pressure this ball-shaped mooncake into the mold and then gently tap the side of the mold to a hard surface to reveal the beautiful patterns
- spray some water on top of the mooncake before baking to avoid any crackings
- bake this in the oven for 5 minutes in 390F
- take it out and readjust the oven to 350F
- while the oven cools down, you can mix together egg and water and brush this egg wash on top of the mooncakes for a finishing touch, this allows the surface of the mooncake to shine brighter and gold
- place the mooncake back in the oven for another 10-13 minutes or until the surface turns a little bit golden
- now this next step is the hardest part, wait for a day or so for the mooncake to settle, so that the oils in the mooncake can regenerate the oil from the surface. this is because the freshly baked mooncakes are rather hard and dry so letting it rest for a day in a close container will be the smart move!
- now you're all done! enjoy~
Notes
There are many combinations of fillings that we can make from this recipe and here are the main ones that I am going to highlight to keep things simple!
1. traditional style moon cake, which is made by freezing the salted egg yolks custards into balls and then wrapping it in the red bean paste and mooncake skin dough
2. custard raspberry mooncake, u do not need to freeze the egg custard with this one, just simply wrap a raspberry in the 30g of custard into a ball and then wrapp the mooncake skin over it.
3. raspberry red bean, just like how it sounded, wrap a rasberry in redbean paste, and then wrapp the mooncake skin dough around it!
watch video:
For more recipes, click here !
Disclosure: Some of the links and items on this page may contain affiliate links. This will not cost you anything additional but as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases through the affiliate links.
Leave a Reply