The Food Site

I know, I know…another chocolate dessert recipe but it is the mooncake festival anyway. And I don’t know why but I wanted to try my hands at baking my own mooncakes again. Last year’s chocolate mooncakes were a disaster when I brushed on too much egg glaze and the mooncakes looked horrible although it tasted absolutely heavenly.

So, this year, I baked the regular plain mooncakes and a batch of chocolate mooncakes too. You can find the recipes in my recipes page. Again, this year, I bought the ready-made fillings of lotus paste, chocolate paste and red bean paste. No point wasting hours cooking the fillings when there are really good ones that we can buy. Besides, they even have sugar free lotus-paste  fillings which I could give to my diabetic grandma.

Anyway, this year, I went easy on the egg glaze and got really chocolatey and nice looking mooncakes.

See? A real improvement compared to last year’s horrid looking ones.

Baked mooncakes are a real time-consuming process as you have to allow for ‘resting’ time of about 10 hours for the raw ingredients before we can wrap the fillings and bake it.The first process is to mix together baking soda, golden syrup, alkaline water and oil in a mixing bowl and then let it rest for about 5 hours.

Then, I sift the flour and cocoa powder together and leave aside until the first ingredients are ready. After five hours, I add some chocolate essence and then fold in the flour into the brown liquid mixture to form a smooth, sticky dough.

Again, I have to let the dough rest for another 6 hours or so. Only after that that I divide the dough into small portions, flatten it and wrap it around the fillings into a ball. Then I push the ball into the plastic moulds I bought last year.

Then I pop those mooncakes into the oven for about 10 minutes. Remove and let it cool for 5 minutes and then brush on the egg glaze and then bake another 3 minutes.Then I get these:

Some of the sizes vary a bit because by the time I waiting 11 hours for the dough to be ready, it was already midnight and let me tell you, moulding mooncakes in the middle of the night is not exactly very accurate when it comes to the size.

Here’s the recipe:

Baked Chocolate Mooncakes Recipe

Ingredients A

400g golden syrup

1/2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 tbsp alkaline water

100g corn oil

Ingredients B

450g plain flour, sifted

100g cocoa powder, sifted

Other ingredients

1 tsp chocolate essence

1.5 kg of ready-made lotus paste/ chocolate paste/ red bean paste

Instructions

1. Mix ingredients A in a mixing bowl and let it rest about 5 hours.

2. Sift ingredients B together.

3. After 5 hours, add the chocolate essence to the ingredients A and stir will combined. Then fold in ingredients B. Mix it together until you get a smooth sticky dough. Set aside for another 6 hours.

4. Divide the dough into small balls, about the size of a ping pong ball or smaller depending on the size of your moulds, and then flatten it on a floured surface using a rolling pin. Scoop a generous dollop of fillings onto it and wrap the skin around it.

5. Push the wrapped dough into the floured mould and then gently push it out using the lever (if you are using a wooden mould, then gently knock it out).

6. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Place the moulded mooncakes on a floured baking pan and bake between 8 to 10 minutes.

7. Remove from oven and let it cool for about 5 minutes. Then, lightly brush it with some egg glaze to give it some glossy shine. Bake for another 3 – 5 minutes.

8. Once done, remove from oven and let it cool before removing from the baking pan.

Egg Glaze Recipe

Ingredients

1 egg yolk

1/2 tbsp water

a pinch of salt

Instructions

Mix it all together in a bowl and use a pastry brush to lightly brush it on the mooncakes.

Other Mooncake Baking Tips You Should Know:

1. Never over-bake your mooncakes or else it will go out of shape (as I also experienced that last year). So, if your oven is of a higher wattage, bake it for less than 10 minutes, maybe at 8 minutes and after putting the egg glaze, you bake it for another 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Never keep the mooncakes in an airtight container immediately after it has cooled down. It is always best to leave it out in the open, preferably overnight for the skin to soften. You don’t want dry, hard mooncake skin!

3. The golden syrup is important because it is what keeps the mooncake from becoming mouldy (as in fungi growth) too fast.

4. Even with the golden syrup, these are homemade mooncakes so they don’t last as long as commercial mooncakes which may contain added preservatives sp it is best to keep them in a dry cool place and don’t keep for too long.

Honestly, I’ve never even heard of Batik Cake until a friend raved about how great and rich and nice and all that to me. It sure did piqued my interest. The best of it is that it is a non-bake cake. It’s one of those cook over the stove, stir, pat into pan and refrigerate type of cake.

Considering I have been limiting my baking activities because I was not in the mood much nowadays, I thought heck, why not? A non-bake cake with loads of cocoa in it sounds simple and good enough.

The reason it’s called Batik Cake is pretty obvious looking at it. It looks like Batik pattern. I think it originated from East Malaysia, well, that’s what I found out when sifting through the numerous recipes available and custom-making it to suit my own taste.

As easy as it sounds, it actually turned out to be quite a lot of work too. But the end result told me it is worth all the work. The ingredient calls for rich tea biscuits (or Marie biscuits), sugar, butter, eggs, cocoa and fresh milk.

First, you smash up the rich tea biscuits into small pieces. This is a good time to let go of any frustrations or stress you have. Just imagine smashing the head of the person who had irritated you. What? The biscuits won’t feel a thing. It is a great stress reliever. Really…okay, if you are all serene and at peace with the world, you can always use the food processor to do the ‘dirty’ work.  Then set it aside for later.

Next, you pour the sugar (I use brown sugar but you can always use regular white sugar), eggs, milk and cocoa powder into a mixing bowl and use a whisk to combine it all together.

Place a pan on the stove, dump the butter in and melt it over low heat. You don’t want to burn it or anything. Then, when it is all melted, you pour in the milk, eggs, flour, sugar and cocoa mixture. Let the mixture cook over low to medium fire until it has thickened. That should take between 10 to 15 minutes. Oh and remember to stir it all the while or else you may burn it.

It should thicken to this consistency. I know it looks lumpy but it is supposed to be like this. This is because the eggs are cooked, thus the lumpiness. But don’t worry, you won’t taste any lumpiness when you eat it later.

Then, you stir in the smashed tea biscuits. By that, I meant, really stir in. Mix it all up really, really well.

Make sure each tiny piece of biscuit is really covered in the thick cocoa mixture.

Then, you can spoon the thick mixture into a pan lined with greaseproof paper and pat it in. Don’t worry about hurting it. Really push it all in and flatten in. You want it to be compact.

To me, no chocolate cake, bake or non-bake, is complete without a nice chocolate ganache topping which I later add to the top. You can leave this out if you want to. After adding the topping, just put the pan into the fridge and let it set for several hours. It is best serve cold with a nice glass of milk. Yummm…

What does it taste like? Well, the tea biscuits gave it a slightly salty, biscuit-y flavour and the chocolate, oh, the chocolate is darn good. It’s like having rich chocolate covered tea biscuits, except better. Much, much better.

Now, here’s the recipe:

Batik Cake Recipe

Ingredients

200g rich tea biscuits (Marie biscuits)

3 eggs

1 cup brown sugar

250g butter

1 cup cocoa powder (optional: you can also use 1/2 cup cocoa powder and 1/2 cup Milo)

1/2 cup fresh UHT milk

Instructions

1. Smash up the rich tea biscuits and set aside.

2. Combine the sugar, eggs, cocoa and milk in a mixing bowl and mix well.

3. Melt the butter in a pan over low fire and then add in the cocoa mixture.

4. Cook the mixture until it thickened. Remove from heat.

5. Stir in the biscuits and mix it well to ensure the biscuits are all covered in the thick cocoa mixture.

6. Spoon the mixture into a pan, pre-lined with greaseproof paper (if you prefer), and press it all in firmly.

7. Spoon the chocolate ganache topping on top and spread it out evenly with a spatula or the back of the spoon.

8. Refrigerate the mixture for several hours, preferably more than 4 hours, and serve it cold.

Chocolate Ganache Topping Recipe

Ingredients

225g good quality dark chocolate, chopped

115ml heavy cream

60g butter

Instructions

1. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat. Add the cream and bring to a boil, careful not to burn it.

2. Pour the butter-cream mixture over the chocolate and stir until melted.

3. The chocolate ganache is ready!

Since I don’t have heavy cream on hand, I didn’t add that but added some icing sugar with more butter and a tablespoon of condensed milk and it turns out pretty okay too. I mostly used non-sweet dark chocolate so the addition of icing sugar did not make it too sweet. However, if you want perfect chocolate topping, do use the heavy cream, it does makes a difference, especially teamed with the batik cake!