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.

Okay, so the past few posts are calorie-loaded, fat-loaded, sinfully wonderful desserts so I think it is only right I put up a comparatively healthier dessert recipe that made its appearance only in recent years. I don’t even know what it’s called but most of the stalls selling this dessert will often label it as Soya Milk Jelly. Well, I would say it is more like a soya milk pudding than anything.

I made it with a can of evaporated milk instead of soya milk since I had that available. It is pretty easy to make actually and does not take up much time, except for the waiting time for it to firm up.

All you really need is sugar, jelly powder, water and milk or soya milk. If you like some canned longans in it, you can also have that ready and open a can.

Get the containers ready, the plastic cups with covers. I use the cup as measurements for the amount of water or sugar needed. I think each cup is about 200ml. So, if you are making 15 cups of pudding, you will need 15 cups of water, 1 cup sugar, half can of the evaporated milk and half packet of the jelly powder. First, you will need to dissolve the jelly powder, bring the 15 cups of water to boil, add the sugar, jelly solution and the milk.

Once it’s cool down, you can pour into the containers.

You then wait for it to really become firm before you add the canned longans and some of the syrup from the canned longans.

Refrigerate and serve cold. It’s great as dessert, tea time snack or for the sake of eating something sweet but not so sinful. The cups I’m referring to here are the containers we use for the pudding. Here’s the recipe and simple instructions:

Soya Milk Pudding Recipe

(This recipe is for 34 servings)

Ingredients

34 cups of water (about 200ml each cup)

3 cups of sugar (300g)

1 can of evaporated milk or soya milk (400g)

1 packet of the jelly powder (as in the picture above or about 50g)

Instructions

1. Dissolve the jelly powder in 200ml of water

2. Heat up the 34 cups of water in a pan.

3. Add the sugar and let it dissolve.

4. Add in the dissolved jelly and the milk or soya milk.

5. Stir over medium heat for about 15 minutes.

6. Remove from heat and leave to cool but before it firms up.

7. Pour into the cups and leave it to firm up.

8. Add the canned longans to each cup, then refrigerate. Serve cold.