Last year’s mooncakes were barely satisfactory.  The dough still has a long way to go to approach commercial quality. Below is the new improved recipe.

Equipment

• Mooncake mould
• Round box for dusting the assembled balls. Disposable food container will do nicely.

Fillings

• Red bean or Lotus paste
• Melon seeds, roasted in the toaster oven.
• M&M or chocolate of any kind for kids.

Recipe for the dough or skin

• 100gm fried glutinous rice flour or “kou fen”
• 50gm shortening
• 50gm icing sugar
• 140ml of water
• 1 tablespoon of condensed milk.
• 1 teaspoon of pandan flavouring
• 1 teaspoon of the desired colouring.
• 1 small bowl of flour for dusting.
• Some toothpicks for cleaning (optional)

Sieve the flour and icing sugar together into a mixing bowl.  Put the shortening and condensed milk into the flour. Separately, mix water, flavouring and colouring into a syrup.

Instead of mixing the flour and syrup together slowly like cake making, pour the entire portion of syrup into mixing bowl.  Using a spatula, I use a rice cooker spatula, stir the mixture till you get a soft dough.  It should be like something like a concrete putty but softer.  If it is like Play Dough, you need to add more water. Make sure there are no lumps but do not over stir or it will harden like plasticine.

Cover the mixing bowl with cling wrap and let it stand for about 20 minutes.

Using a weighing scale divide up dough into lumps of 40gm.  At the same time layout a similar number of balls of filling.  I used commercial white lotus paste. For my small mould, it is about 20gm.   The small mould should take a filled ball of 60gm.  Stuff the chocolate in the filling centre. Adjust accordingly depending on the amount of filling that you desire.

Alternatively, you can try for a 20grams of dough to 20grams of filling (inclusive of chocolate) for a 40grams ball.  This won’t fill the mould but it is easier to fall out!

You should prepare this beforehand. When you are assembling the pastry or dough with the filling, it can get messy.

On a pre dusted flat surface, I used a dinner plate, flatten a ball of dough.  Place a ball of filling and slowly cover it up with the filling.  Once the filling is covered, dust it by rolling it in a small bowl of flour.  Toss the ball hand to hand to remove excess flour. Place the ball into the moon cake mould.  Press firmly to ensure the sides are filled out.  Slap out the moulded mooncake.  See link for more details

Some bits of the dough might get stuck in the mould carvings.  Use a toothpick to cleanup.

You can store the mooncake in a sealed container in the fridge for up to three days.  The skin will start cracking thereafter.