Finale

Yesterday was the Mid-Autumn Festival, known as 中秋节 for the Chinese. During this day, what we usually do is to eat mooncakes, pomelos and drink Chinese teas.

I made my final batch of snow skin mooncakes with the help of my dear hubby. In fact, he helped me with all the making and the washing. :) This is the final post for mooncakes. I leave here the description of my grand FINALE.

"Chiller, chiller in the fridge,
I want like to eat mooncakes,
but don't want it baked.
I like chocolate taste,
but don't want lotus paste."

"Your Highness, your highness,
Snow skin mooncakes,
don't require bake.
Chocolate Rum & Raisins,
with Pine Nuts,
will satisfy your gut.
It leaves a Rum after-taste,
without the lotus paste."

Snow Skin Mooncakes

I'm quite hooked on snow skin mooncakes lately. They are much easier to prepare than those baked ones, and yummy too! Thursday evening, I decided to do another batch of snow skin mooncakes-Pandan & Coffee. I use the Kwong Cheong Thye (KCT) recipe since I bought the Fried Glutinous Rice Flour & the White Lotus Paste there. I'm very happy with the Snow Skin Pandan Mooncakes, but the Snow Skin Coffee Mooncakes were a bit disappointing as there was not much coffee taste & fragrant.

Modified Recipe (Original provided by KCT)
(According to the recipe: Makes 9 regular mooncakes-90g skin + 120g paste, or 20 mini mooncakes-30g skin dough + 60g paste)
Ingredients:
Snow Skin Dough
150g Fried Glutinous Rice Flour
200g Icing Sugar
65g Shortening
150g Cold Drinking Water

1/2 tsp pandan paste
1/2 tsp coffee extract

Method:
1. Sift fried glutinous rice flour and icing sugar together.
2. Add shortening.
3. Add water and mix well into a dough.
4. Divide the dough into two portion, one weighing 244g, the other weighing 305g there or about.
5. Add 1/2 tsp pandan paste to the bigger dough (305g) and 1/2 tsp coffee paste to the other dough (244g).
6. Knead well and ensure that the paste is well mixed with the doughs.
7. Let the dough rest for 20 minutes.
8. Divide each dough into a portion of 61g. You should get 4 doughs for the coffee and 5 doughs for the pandan.

Lotus Fillings
Coffee Paste
360g White Lotus Paste
25g Pine Nuts (toasted)
1 tsp Coffee Paste

Pandan Paste
450g White Lotus Paste
30g Melon Seeds (toasted)
1 tsp Pandan Paste

Method:
1. Under each individual paste, mix the flavoured paste well with the white lotus paste.
2. Add the seeds/nuts to the paste and mix well.
3. Divide the dough into 96g each, 4 portions for coffee and 5 portions for pandan.
4. Flatten a pandan snow skin dough, place a ball of pandan paste and push the paste against the dough.
5. Wrap up the mooncake and roll into a ball.
6. Place the ball into the mould and press until a flat surface is achieved.
7. Knock out the shaped mooncake from the mould by lightly knocking in all directions with one hand and using the other hand to catch the dislodged mooncake.
8. Immediately chill the mooncakes in an airtight container.

祝大家，中秋节快乐! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all!

Snow Skin Chocolate Mooncakes

"Chiller, chiller in the kitchen,
What is soft outside,
Chocky inside,
With a hint of alcohol??"

"Your Highness,
Snow Skin Chocolate Rum Mooncakes,
Is what you desire.
White lotus paste,
Wrapped in Chocolate,
Mixed with Rum & Pine Nuts,
Inside white snow skin!"

I also made Snow Skin Green Tea Mooncakes earlier this week.

These were some mooncakes from my mum. They are from Malaysia and taste pretty good too! The Mickey & Minnie Mooncake Cookies were from my colleague. :)

Snow Skin Green Tea Mooncakes

...And so they said, the rest is history. Since I started buying ingredients for moontarts, like white lotus paste, I can't help but to buy green tea paste. However, I wasn't ready to bake "bake skin" mooncakes, I ended up buying snow skin pre-mix to go with my green tea paste. Then of course, I will need to buy melon seeds. So the list went on & on & on...

Thinking that snow skin mooncakes weren't that difficult since I have all the ready-made ingredients, I made the Green Tea mooncakes after baking my walnut moontarts. I wasn't ready to bake snow skin initially, and didn't have any ready recipe to follow. I had to search the web for a recipe using the pre-mix snow skin. I finally found one at Sweet Decadenze. I tried to follow her recipe, hopefully it worked.

Modified Recipe
Ingredients:

For Snowskin Dough:
250g RED MAN Snow Skin Premix
100g Ice water
50g shortening
1 tsp Green Tea Powder

For Mooncake Paste:
500g Green Tea paste
25g Melon seeds, lightly baked
15g Pumpkin seeds (Optional)

Method:
1. Add ice water to the premix and green tea powder to form a soft dough. Do not add all the water at one go. Check for consistency before adding more ice water in.
2. Knead in the shortening. Ensure that no lumps are formed and the dough becomes smooth.
3. Leave the dough aside to rest for about 30-45 minutes in a cool, dry place (or chill in the fridge).
4. Meanwhile, spread green tea paste on a piece of plastic sheet. Spread melon seeds on the paste and roll the paste up like rolling a swiss roll. Spread the paste and roll it up again to make sure melon seeds are nicely "embedded" in the paste.
5. Divide mooncake paste into 20 portions of about 26g each. Knead each portion a little and form each into a ball.
6. Divide the rested dough into 20 portions of 20g each. Knead each portion a little and form each into a ball.
7. Flatten a snow skin dough on your palm to be a 2-inch circle. Press to make the edges thinner than the central part.
8. Place a ball of paste. Start pushing the paste against the dough. As you push the paste, the dough will start enlarging.
9. Wrap up the mooncake and roll into a ball.
10. Place the ball into the mould and press until a flat surface is achieved.
11. Knock out the shaped mooncake from the mould by lightly knocking in all directions with one hand and using the other hand to catch the dislodged mooncake.
12. Immediately chill the mooncakes in an airtight container.

Notes:
a) I used about 115g of water, which resulted in a very soft skin. So when I tried to remove the mooncake from the mould, it is extremely difficult, and you can see that my designs are not sharp, as some of the skin were actually stuck to the mould.
b) The mould I used is from Phoon Huat. Therefore, halving the recipe makes exactly 20 mini mooncakes.
c) Putting pumpkin seeds is optional. I thought since all are green, add more greens to the green...
d) You may add colouring to the snow skin if you prefer darker green.
e) Some of the steps above were extracted from Jo's Deli. You may refer to her site for more detailed steps.