I made four types of mooncake for this year's Mid-Autumn Festival: Traditional single yolk lotus, mixed-nuts mooncake, spiral mooncake with yam and pumpkin filling, Shanghai mooncake with single yolk lotus.
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| Nuts/Seeds: Walnuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, melon seeds, almond flakes Sweet/Savory ingredients: Medjool dates, dried cranberries, dried preserved mandarin (吉饼), barbeque pork |
It is my first attempt with mixed nuts mooncake. Compared with other mooncakes, Mixed nuts mooncake is the healthiest of all. Each mooncake is loaded with nuts and dried fruits. It is almost like eating a muesli bar!
I adapted this mixed nuts mooncake recipe from Aunty Yochana. I did not measure to the dot for the amount of nuts/seeds/fruits used. But roughly, I kept to around 80g to 100g for each nuts/seeds/dried fruits(or combined ingredients; for instance, I used about 50g of cranberries plus 50g Medjool dates (since both ingredients are quite sweet). I have also pre-toasted the nuts and seeds first. Basically, what you need to do is to mix all the ingredients and seasoning together to form balls of filling for the mooncake. Then, you will wrap the filling with the mooncake pastry skin. The pastry skin and method is the same for making traditional lotus paste mooncake.
Another new attempt is the Teochew's spiral yam paste mooncake. I am not completely satisfied with my spiral mooncakes, so I will not be sharing the recipe for this. The problem I had is: they tasted great when they were freshly baked or deep fried. The crispy skin combines beautifully with the soft and melt in the mouth yam paste filling. But, the goodness have a "too-short" expiry date .... after a few hours, the fried ones would lose the crispiness and tasted oily instead. The baked ones remain good for only 1 to 2 days. I suspect I did not cook the yam paste long enough. Shall try again next round. Any tips from experts?
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| Yam paste, pumpkin paste and spiral pastry dough |
My homemade mooncakes to share with my family and friends.
