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.