Translucent Salted Egg Custard Moon Cake (通透奶黄流心月饼)

This is this year's trendy style moon cake. It is complicated and time consuming, but delicious.

PART 1: Salted Egg Custard Filling

【Ingredients】
Egg - 3 (about 150g)
Milk Powder - 55g
Corn Starch - 55g
Sugar A - 80g
Sugar B - 32g
Evaporated Milk - 80 g
Coconut Milk - 75g
Butter - 30g
Salted Egg Yolk - 3 (if not cooked, spray with liquor and bake 10 minutes at 300°F)

【Steps】
1. In a mixing bowl, mix Sugar A and eggs, then sift in corn starch, milk powder; keep mixing until smooth.

2. Break the egg yolk into crumbs using a Ziploc bag and rolling pin.

3. In a small sauce pan, add evaporated milk, coconut milk, and sugar B, butter, cook at low heat until the butter is melt and the mixture is almost boiling.

3. Pour the egg barter in step 1 to sauce pan, then add the egg yolk crumbs. Keep stirring and cooking until the filling is sticky.

5. Put the filling in a Ziploc bag and knead it until it is more consistent.

6. Seal the Ziploc bag, and put in refrigerator.

PART 2: Molten Custard Filling

【Ingredients】
Evaporated Milk - 40g
Sugar - 15g
Coconut milk - 5g
Corn Starch - 2g
Gelatin powder - 2 g
Salted Egg Yolk - 1 (cooked)
【Steps】
1. Break the egg yolk into crumbs using a Ziploc bag and rolling pin.
2. Mix corn flour with coconut milk and put aside
3. Mix Gelatin powder  with 1 TBSP of evaporated milk and put aside
4. In a sauce pan, add evaporated milk and sugar, cook under low heat until boiling.
5. Add the corn flour mixture, egg yolk, and Gelatin powder in the sauce pan; cook until the mixture is well mixed, and can still flow.

6. Transfer filling to a Ziploc bag, seal it and put in freezer for 0.5 to 1 hour.
7. Take out the filling, knead it, and then portion it into 5 g balls (about 11 of them). Put the filling back to freezer until it is frozen firm, about 2 hours.

PART 3: Translucent Skin

【Ingredients】
Syrup - 35 g
Oil - 13 g
All-purpose Flour - 45 g
Lotus seed filling - 100 g
【Steps】
1. Mix the syrup and oil. If the mixture is well mixed, the liquid should flow at even speed when dripping from a spoon.
2. Sift in flour, knead into a dough.
3. Add lotus seed filling and knead the dough.

4. Put the dough in Ziploc bag, seal and store in refrigerator.

PART 4: Assembly

1. Weight out the salted egg yolk custard filling into approximately 25 g balls, (about 11 to match the number of molten custard fillings).

2. Wrap the frozen molten custard filling with the salted egg yolk filling. Cover and freeze the balls until it is firm, about 1 hour.

3. Partition the skin dough into 15-18 g balls to match the number of fillings. Wrap the filling in the skin. Then use 50 g moon cake mold to press in shape.

4. Cover the cakes and put in freezer for at least 4 hours. 

PART 5: Bake

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. (Could consider to bake at 390°F instead to see if the cake pattern can stay better)
2. Take cakes out of freezer, lightly spray with water; put in oven to bake for 10 minutes.
3. Adjust oven temperature to 325°F.
4. Take out the cake to brush with egg wash, then bake for another 10 minutes until the top is golden.

5. The cake is best consumed warm. If it is kept in refrigerator, you should bake or microwave it before serve. 

Date Pastry Filling (枣泥馅)

After I made my own date filling, I do not think I can go back to the commercial date filling pastry any more. However, it is pretty time consuming to make because the dates need to be peeled one by one, so use jumbo dates :-)

Ingredients

Dried pitted date - 1/2 lb

Water - 3 cups

Brown sugar - 1/4 cup

Vegetable oil - 3 TBSP

Corn starch - 1 TBSP

Steps:

1. Boiling date and water in a small pot for 30 minutes or until  dates are soft. Let the dates cool a little and then peel the dates.

2. Put the peeled date back to pot for another 20 minutes to reduce the sauce. Then add sugar, and oil in batches until the sauce is almost gone.

3. When the date can be kneaded together, sift in corn starch. Mix well and let it cool.

Moon Cake Filling - Lotus Seed (莲蓉馅)

Ingredients:

Dried lotus seed - 1 bag 400g
Unsalted butter - 45g
Corn oil - 45g
Sugar - 1.25 cup (this can be reduced per personal preference)
Sweetened condensed milk - 4 TBSP
Corn starch - 3 TBSP

Steps:

1. Soak dried lotus seed in water overnight.

2. Boiling lotus seed in water until the beans are soft. Drain out the excessive water.
3. Blend the cooked lotus seed with a blender or electrical mixer, add sweetened condensed milk, sugar.

4. Pour the mixture from step 3 to a large fry pan, add butter and oil. Simmer under low heat, gradually sift in corn starch until the mixture can be folded with spatula easily.

5. Take mixture out and let it cool down. Chill it in refrigerator. If you do not plan to use it within a day, you can put it in sealed container in freezer.

Snowy Moon Cake 2015

This year I used Junsome's recipe for the dough. Compare to my recipe last year, this dough is softer.

Ingredients:

Glutinous rice flour (糯米粉) - 135g
Rice flour (粘米粉)- 105g
Wheat starch (小麦澄粉) - 60g
Milk - 555g
Corn oil - 54g
Powdered sugar - 150g
For filling
 - Green bean, red bean, lotus seed, purple yam, chocolate, strawberry, green tea, pumpkin
 - Or other creative choices
For handling
- Some cooked glutinois rice flour
Optional
 - Green tea power to make green tea flavored skin - 2 TBSP
 - Coco powder to make chocolate flavored skin
 - Food color to make different color skin
Also need 50g moon cake mold.

      

Steps:

1. Mix all ingredients in a microwaveable bowl and let it sit for 30 minutes.

2. Cook mixture in microwave for 5 minutes or until it is cooked. Take the bowl out to stir the mixture during the period if needed. This can also be done with steamer. Cover the bowl when you steam.

3. Knead the dough thoroughly until smooth. Add green tea powder or other optional color and knead until the color is consistent.

4. Use kitchen scale to weight fillings and round them balls; weigh skin dough and round them to balls. For a 50g moon cake mold, the proportion of filling vs. skin is about 1:1. So you can do 25:25 or 30g:20g if you want less skin.
5. Flatten a skin ball gently on your palm, put in a filling ball.
6. Wrap the filling with the skin. Use one hand to hold the rim of the skin, and another hand to push the filling down gently. Rotate the ball until the filling is fully wrapped.
7. Coat the moon cake ball with cooked glutinous rice flour so that it will not stick to the mold.
7. Place the ball on a smooth surface, prefer glass; place the moon cake mold over the ball; push down the plunger hard to get the moon cake in shape.

8. Put moon cake in sealed container, and chill the moon cake in refrigerator overnight.

Getting colorful

Moon cake filling - Pumpkin (Kabocha)

Kabocha is an Asian variety of winter squash. It is commonly called Japanese pumpkin.

Steps:

1. Cut one pumpkin to large pieces, steam until they are soft.
2. Blend the cooked pumpkin in a blender.
3. In a large fry pan, add 6 TBSP of butter, pumpkin puree, 4 TBSP sweetened condensed milk, 1/4 cup sugar(or more for sweeter taste), simmer together. Gradually add approximately 3 TBSP of corn starch and cook until the mixture can be easily folded with spatula.

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Moon cake filling - Chocolate, Green tea, and Strawberry

The northern beans taste bland and are beige-colored. It is a good medium to make different flavor moon cake fillings.

Make the white bean paste

This is same as making green bean paste, or red bean paste.

Ingredients:

Dried Northern Bean - 1 bag, 14oz (400g)
Butter - 45g
Oil - 45g
Sugar - 0.5 Cup (you can add more sugar later when you are adjusting the flavor)
Sweetened condensed milk - 4 TBSP
Corn starch - 3 TBSP

Steps:

1. Soak the beans overnight in water.

2. Boiling until the beans are soft. After cooked, drain excessive water if possible.
3. Mix the cooked bean with blender to make sure it is smooth. Stir in sugar, oil, sweetened condensed milk.

4. In a large fry pan, add butter. When butter is melted, pour in the mixture and simmer under low heat. Gradually sift in corn starch with flour sifter until the mixture can be folded with spatula easily.

5. Take mixture out of fry pan and let it cool down. Chill it in refrigerator. If you do not plan to use it within a day, you can put it in sealed container in freezer.

Get Creative

Pour the white bean paste in an electrical mixer, then start to add different flavors, a teaspoon at a time. If the paste gets too dry, add some corn oil; if the paste is not sweet enough, add powdered sugar. If the paste gets too slushy, you may need to simmer it again in a frying pan, and add more corn starch. 

Chocolate filling: 

Add coco powder

Green tea filling: 

Add green tea powder

Mocha filling: 

Add coco powder and instant coffee powder.

Strawberry filling: 

Blend in some strawberry jam during step 3 and reduce the amount of sugar used, depends on the sweetness of your jam. 

Bean paste cake (绿豆糕)

1. Prepare green bean pastry filling and red bean pastry filling.

2. Portion and roll them into small balls, and wrap the red bean filling in the green bean paste.

3. Use a 50g moon cake mold to press them in shape. Keep refrigerated.