Mooncakes

It all started with me looking around for birthday cakes for my 2 princes. I was trying to look for something new and different from those selling at Bengawan, Polar Cakes, Prima Deli & Swensons...

Then, one day, I came to know that a friend's wife makes cakes. I read her blog and I was very impressed. I thought it would be cool if I could make the birthday cakes myself and I started to search for more info on the cake baking classes. Just then, I realise the CC near my place has baking classes. There are 5 stages, with 8 lessons per stage. I signed up for it. But I realise it will take me a long way, before I can make a nice cake like those I saw in the blog. So, in the end I just ordered the cakes from the friend and told myself to pick up the skill slowly. Hopefully, by this time next year, I can acquire enough skill to make "professionally" nice looking and yummy cakes.

In the meantime, the Mooncake Festival is coming, I took the opportunity, pull my sister-in-law along, took up the mooncake making class.

We made the 1st batch of mooncakes last Monday, but we forgot to take pictures. Last Saturday, we tried the 2nd round - traditional mooncakes & snow skin mooncakes.

Traditional Mooncakes:

1. Traditional mooncake skin have to be made first and let it rest for at least 5 hours. I made it a day before
   

1. Pandan paste mixed with melon seeds. I also used white lotus paste with salted egg yolks.

For the salted egg yolks, washed away the egg white, season with sesame oil and bake it for 10 mins.

1. Dough with the skin wrapped around the paste. Before and after putting into mould. The most difficult part is to ensure the skin is evenly spread out over the paste. For the not so skillful people like us, its quite a challenging job.

1. Mooncakes just came out from oven. The colour is not very even, cos I wasn't experienced enough in applying the egg yolk over the surface. Needs more training.

1. Though the look is not fantastic, the taste is good!




2. 
   
   

Snowskin Mooncakes:

1. We used different ingredients from what we were taught in class, cos I saw the snow skin pre mix ingredients in Phoon Huat. So, for the "short-cut" way, we used these.

1. Dough after mixing all the ingredients together. I took an extra step, instead of using plain water to mix, I boiled the water with pandan leaves, and chilled the boiled pandan water first.

1. The finished product of the snowskin mooncakes. This will taste better after chilling. Though the colour look nice, but the skin seem to be a little too oily. I also got feedback that the skin is a little hard, compared to the Tung Lok mooncake.

Altogether we made 69 traditional mooncakes (medium size) and 27 snow skin mooncakes (medium size). We started about 9.30am in the morning and finished at about 4pm. By the time we finished, our legs were numb. We gave away some to neighbours and relatives. Well, the good thing is - we saved a lot of $$$. The cost of the ingredients were much lower than those mooncakes selling in the restaurants or hotels!!!

Thinking of doing this as business? Dare not think yet...

The learning of baking is a long way to go. Though now I get hooked in baking, I am just interested in the process of baking, not really on eating. So, people around me got to be prepared to swallow off all my successful and unsuccessful products....till I get tired of baking.