Back To Basics–Baked Traditional Mooncake (传统粤式月饼）

INTRODUCTION

I told members in my Facebook Group that as a Chinese food blogger, I will not do justice to my blog if I do not blog some traditional baked mooncake. Besides the Teochew flaky crust mooncake, this is another type of mooncake that is available in my home town when I was a kid . Then the choice of the fillings were very limited, mostly red bean paste (black Tausa) and lotus paste is very expensive and less common. It was also wrapped in pieces of white and red paper without the fancy well design packaging like what we have to day.

This post is a very basic recipe for the traditional baked mooncake. In fact,  I have prepared two batches.

The filling to dough ratio is not correct for the first batch and I have to prepare another batch to re-test the recipe that I am issuing today. Yes, there are some calculation mistakes for my first batch and subsequent adjustment to the second batch have addressed the issues.

As contrast to the flaky crust (Suzhou, Teochew ) or the short crust skin (Shanghai), the crust of this mooncake is termed as chewy crust It is a brown piece of dough wrapped around a ball of filling and baked in the oven . The result is a golden brown piece of mooncake. It is interesting to understand from Wikipedia about this skin:

“This crust has a reddish-brown tone and glossy sheen. It is the most common type of crust used on Cantonese-style mooncakes. It is also the most commonly seen type of mooncake in North America and many western countries. Chewy mooncake crusts are made using a combination of thick sugar syrup, lye water (枧水, sodium hydroxide [NaOH]) or sodium carbonate (碱面 [Na₂CO₃]), flour, and oil, thus giving this crust its rich taste and a chewy yet tender texture. Chewiness can be increased further by adding maltose syrup to the mixture. “(Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mooncake)

As the purpose of this post is to share the recipe of this chewy crust, therefore I have opt to select the most common filling, lotus paste with a single yolk. I am rather pleased with my second batches especially the exterior outlook of my mooncake. One slight dissatisfaction is that the yolk is not in the centre for the mooncake that I have selected for cutting and for picture taking purposes.. Haha.

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WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: Traditional Baked Mooncake 中秋月饼 (2011)

Servings: Prepare 4 mooncakes of about 8cm diameter (weigh about 160-170 grams per mooncake)

Crust

• 120 grams of cake flour or top flour or Hong Kong flour
• 70 grams of golden syrup
• 30 grams of peanut oil
• 4 grams of alkaline water

Fillings

• 4 salted egg yolks
• 440 grams of lotus seed paste
• 40 grams of melon seeds (optional)

Egg washing

• 1 egg yolk plus 1 tablespoon of milk plus few drops of cooking oil, beat and sift

Others

• Some mooncake mould of your choice.

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STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Pre-treatment of egg yolk – wash the egg yolk with some Chinese cooking wine, either steamed until it is cooked or cooked in the microwave oven for 20 seconds. Take away all the egg whites attached.

• Mix all the skin/crust ingredients in a mixing bowl. Stir and knead until well mixed. Let it rest in the mixing bowl for 20-30 minutes. Theoretically, the longer the dough is rested, the more “stretchable” the dough will be. Stretchable will mean that it is less prone to breaking during moulding . Divide the dough into 4 (about 56 grams each)

• Mix the melon seeds (if any) to the lotus paste fillings and divide into 4 balls (without melon seeds is about 110 grams per balls). Take one ball, shape round, flatten it with your pump and place a salted egg yolk in the centre. Seal the edges, shape as round as possible. Set aside for later use.

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celsius.

• After the dough is adequately rested, take one ball, shape round, flatten it, put a ball of lotus seeds filling and seal the edges.

• Place the dough in your preferred mould, press hard and flatten the dough such that the shape conform to the mould. Dislodge the mooncake and place in a greased baking tray. Bake in the pre-heated oven of 180 degree for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, take out mooncake, let it cool for 5 minutes and egg washed as thoroughly as possible. Ensure that there are no drip of egg in the mooncake as this will deface your mooncake imprints. Send back to the oven and bake again for 10-15 minutes until your desired colour tone.

• It is generally advised that you leave the mooncake for 3 days before consumption. Otherwise, the skin will not be “stretchy” enough and too dry for immediate servings.

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CONCLUSION

Preparing traditional bake mooncake in not difficult, but please remember the following pointers:

• The longer you let the dough to rest, the easier it is for wrapping and have a finer imprint. If prefer, you can even prepare the dough one day ahead and let it rest in the fridge.

• The dough to filling ratio is critical. With the influx of various sizes of mooncake mould, for the first cake, you will have to trial and error and to get the right ratio for subsequent mooncakes. Therefore, it is rather inevitable to have some wastage on skin .The ratio here is for your reference, but do use a ratio that you are comfortable with for the cake. A bit more skin is acceptable and it is better then the fillings exposed cake.

• Egg washing and the last 15 minutes of baking is very critical  and you should place more attention to it. Whether or not your mooncake will look attractive will depend on how detail you egg wash the mooncake and your final colour tone of the mooncake. Remember, no dripping of eggs in the cake.  In addition, as every oven is different, if you want it to brown faster, place on the higher rack. If you are not satisfy with the shininess, egg wash for the second time..With egg wash, the small cake can brown very fast in a matter of minutes depending on your oven.. Hmmm, I usually keep looking into the oven for these few minutes, no Facebook, no surfing, no telephone etc.. ha-ha.

This recipe was included in Page 1-2 of the “Easy Mooncake Recipes E-book”. For more mooncake recipes, you can have a copy of “Easy mooncake recipes  – A step by step guide” that was packed with 20 recipes, 45 pages at a reasonable convenience fee of USD4.00. The recipes covered various recipes from durian mooncake, traditional baked mooncake and also the less common Teochew mooncake . You can purchase by clicking the link above.You can either pay using Pay Pal or Credit card account. Please ensure that you have an PDF reader like Acrobat or iBooks in your mobile phone or iPad if you intended to read it in your ipad or mobile phone. Should there be any problems of purchasing, feel free to contact me at kengls@singnet.com.sg and separate arrangement can be made.

Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

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