Mooncakes

I love all the different kind of  mooncakes. However, I am fussy about their taste. They can't be too sweet, too oily, too dry nor have artificial taste. Hence, ever since I was taught how to make them while in culinary school, I never stopped trying different recipes and am constantly making adjustments, to the way I feel is right.

After 3 years, I am proud to say I am pretty good with most of them, except for the traditional baked ones. Despite numerous attempts, no matter what amount of oil and liquid I try to adjust for the skin and paste, their ratio just don't work out right. This inadvertently affects the final appearance and shape of the product, making the imprinted designs appear somewhat blur and the mooncake shapes distorted :( Need more attempt on this one for sure.

As it is way too tedious and tricky to cook my own lotus paste, I bough a particular brand originated from Hong Kong, which is not too sweet and oily. Most of the other ingredients are made from scratch while colourings and flavous are from fruit purees, natural pandan juice and instant coffee powder. I've also made my own yam paste for the teochew mooncake, under the guidance of my chef.



Mooncake biscuits, children really love them and if the syrup is cooked right, both the syrup and biscuits can be kept for a year, without preservatives... I ate my last piece 8 months later! The most common shapes are piglets and I love these cute goldfishes as well.



I made this to be served as complimentary dessert at the restaurant during the festival. The brown ones are chendol with pandan center while the yellow ones are mango with chocolate. Getting the agar balls to sit perfectly in the centre on the mould's little ridge takes effort and seems impossible if the moulds have been used repetitively .



Snowskin mooncakes, a huge improvement from last attempt and I think I will stick with this recipe. Mocha skin with Valrhona chocolate pearls lotus filling; strawberry skin with macadamia nuts lotus filling; original skin with sesame seeds lotus filling.



Traditional baked mooncakes, which I still need to improve their look although they taste wonderful.



Fried crispy skin teochew style mooncake with yam paste filling. I had the privilege to learn this from a Chinese head chef during my school attachment. It's a lot of work and involves many steps. Am not confident if I can still make it as nice looking as above.



Mooncake Making Workshop for Children 2010

For the last 2 years, I have had the privilege of conducting different workshops for the home school group of children. These include gingerbreadmen cookies for Christmas season, and also the ever popular mooncake workshop for Mid-Autumn Festival.

J, who is a mum in the group, would usually help me organise such workshop at her home, or at one of the mum’s in the group. The logistic for such work shop is usually enormous, with all the ingredients, bake wares, tasting samples and also the oven. I wouldn’t have been able to make it for such, if not from the support of my brother, and most often, J, who help me with the transportation.

The objective of such workshop was not only to have the children have fun, but also to enable them to learn the story behind these treats for the particular festival/celebrations, as well as encourage team bonding. The children range from age 4-12 years. I usually limit the group size to maximum of 8 and the older ones who were usually faster would help the younger ones.

Working with children is not easy, as they need to be kept constantly occupied and also extra attention in terms of safety and keeping order. However, it gives me great satisfaction interacting and watching them enjoying my sessions; especially when end of the workshops, they proudly present their work to their parents.



Ning and Quinn, busy at work on their piglet mooncakes, while Alethea helps a younger participant.




Demonstrating to the children how to cook their agar mixture.

 


Angel pressing her dough into the goldfish mold.

 


Spike, with his proud creation