Today: Cynthia of Two Red Bowls is bringing standard Cantonese mooncakes stateside, appropriate in time for the Chinese Mid-Autumn festival. Stemming from an original 1988 recipe, our leading pick is their Flaky Teochew ‘Orh Ni’ Mooncake with Double Egg Yolks. While enjoying my new life in my new household, getting spoiled with the wide variety of food selections, I realized Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching and somehow I wanted to enjoy a traditional mooncake – one with egg yolk, of course. Due to the fact there are unique formulas of golden syrup and kansui, you could get various results than intended, even if you stick to the recipe a hundred percent.
Foodcraft also make a scrumptious coconut based Coconut and Lemon mooncake, but we are particularly fond of their Raw Cacao option, which features raw cacao oats, dates and goji berries. The recipe from the magazine has integrated instructions on how to make the lotus paste filling and golden syrup from scratch, I believed I should go for ready produced ones this year. If you cannot come across fresh lychees, canned ones will operate just as effectively for this recipe add the syrup from the can to the simmering mixture. Press dough with filling in a dusted mooncake mold, then knock the sides of the mold gently to dislodge the mooncake.
Limited Edition VIP Mooncake: Snow Skin with Bird’s Nest and Pandan (RM38 per piece) and Gold Coated Lotus Paste with Single Yolk Mooncake (RM48 per piece). The important was to let the dough rest for half an hour soon after making it and then to re-knead it to get a far more pliable and smooth dough and ultimately to ensure that you have a little bit of cooked rice flour on hand when you are shaping to dust the dough. The challenge with this mooncake is that the filling hardly tastes of yam alternatively I feel like I am putting a lump of sugar and grease into my mouth.
Some of the recipes use unsalted butter or shortening in the dough and/or taro paste, but I personally like the subtle coconut flavor you get from using coconut oil so I applied that as an alternative. I bought some Tovolo Ice Cream Sandwich moulds to make my mooncakes, simply because vendors refused to provide a CNY 12.00 (much less than $2.00) regular mooncake press for a CNY7.00 delivery fee.
The box: If you’re going for eye-catching presentation, then there’s no doubt that Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore’s mooncakes are the way to go. This year, their mooncakes come in 3 various customised satin boxes, each with their personal peach-blossom embroidery, and person drawers for each and every mooncake. Eliminate the lid tray and mark the level of water left inside, this will be the level that you must fill the jelly liquid to.
