Cantonese Lotus Seed Paste Mooncakes (75 g, 50 g, and various other sizes)

Prepare all the ingredients in advance.

Pour the inverted syrup into a slightly larger container.

Add the peanut oil.

Add the lye water.

Stir until well combined.

Place a flour sifter over the container.

Add the all-purpose flour.

Add the whole milk powder.

Sift them in.

Stir until evenly combined.

Once it roughly comes together into a dough, you can start kneading by hand.

Knead into a smooth dough.

Cover with a layer of plastic wrap.

Let it rest for about 2 hours. When the dough is almost done resting, portion out the filling. In the later steps I’m making 75 g mooncakes. If you want other sizes, the method is exactly the same; only the skin and filling weights are different. If you want to make 50 g or other sizes of mooncakes, scroll to the very bottom where I tell you how many grams of skin and filling to use for each size.

When the dough is almost done resting, portion the lotus paste filling.

In the video I’m making 75 g mooncakes, with a skin-to-filling ratio between 3:7 and 4:6. So I portion the filling into about 51–52 g each. By ratio it should be 50 g each, but from my experience mooncakes lose weight after baking, haha. I used to divide the skin and filling to the exact gram, but after baking they would be about 1–2 g lighter. So now I’m used to giving each one about 1–2 g extra, both the skin and the filling.

After portioning, cover with plastic wrap to prevent the surface from drying out.

When you break the rested mooncake dough, it looks like this—without elasticity. If your dough is quite soft, it may be because the syrup has a high water content. You can add a little flour to adjust. But it’s best to cook the syrup properly in the first place. Dough that’s too soft increases the risk of the sides spreading out (`leaking feet`). If the finished dough feels very dry, then your syrup was overcooked.

Once the dough has finished resting, divide it evenly.

I divide the skin into about 25–26 g each.

After dividing the skin, remove the plastic wrap covering the lotus paste filling.

Place a piece of dough (skin) in your hand.

Pinch it a few times. This helps make the dough finer and softer, so it won’t crack while wrapping.

After pinching, roll it into a ball again.

Then flatten it in the palm of your hand.

Pinch the edges thinner.

After thinning the edges, place the skin in the palm of your left hand and put a ball of lotus paste on it.

Hold both filling and skin together at the base of your left thumb and gently push the skin up around the filling using that area. If you don’t know how to wrap, check out my other tutorial, which explains the wrapping method in great detail. Click here: http://www.xiachufang.com/recipe/103400145/

You can also watch this short video.

Slowly close the skin over the filling. Try to move just the skin upward without squeezing the filling up.

After sealing, roll it into a ball again.

Roll it in a suitable amount of flour.

Then roll it again and again.

Roll until the flour is evenly distributed and no dry flour is visible. The surface of a well-coated ball should look matte. If it looks shiny, there isn’t enough flour and the dough may stick to the mold; in that case, roll it in a bit more flour and continue rolling. If you can still clearly see flour on the surface after rolling, you’ve used too much flour. Keep rolling so the skin absorbs some of it, otherwise the finished mooncakes will have white spots, which look bad.

After rolling in flour and evening it out, roll the ball as shown again.

Shape it into an oval or cylinder. This helps prevent the mold from scraping the sides unevenly and making the skin uneven in thickness.

Place it into the mold.

Press it onto the baking tray. You must press firmly and evenly; otherwise one side will be higher than the other and it won’t look good. While the pressing hand is applying force, the other hand should hold the bottom of the mold to prevent the dough from being squeezed out through the bottom. Press all the way down in one go, until you can’t press any further. If you don’t press tightly enough, the mooncakes may deform easily in the oven and look ugly when done.

Release from the mold, and one mooncake is wrapped and shaped.

You may encounter this problem: While wrapping, cracks appear on the side or anywhere else. This is normal. Pinching the dough more before wrapping can reduce the chances of this happening. If you find cracks like this, don’t worry. Just gently push them together with your fingers.

Wrap and press all the mooncakes in turn. When you’re almost done, start preheating the oven (top and bottom heat at about 180–185°C). For beginners I recommend preheating for at least 10 minutes.

Spray a suitable amount of water onto the shaped mooncakes.

Place the tray into the preheated oven. For beginners, it’s best to buy an oven thermometer to check your oven’s actual temperature. After baking a few times and getting a feel for it, you’ll be fine.

Bake for about 10 minutes to set the shape. The temperature given is for reference only; get familiar with your own oven. Some ovens need 190–200°C for mooncakes, while some only need 170–180°C. Home ovens heat unevenly—mine too—so after a few minutes you can rotate the tray or swap positions.

While the mooncakes are setting, crack the egg.

Separate out the egg white.

You only need half of the yolk.

Beat the egg and mix well for later use. If you don’t mind the trouble, it’s best to strain the egg wash once to remove bubbles for easier brushing later.

When the mooncakes are set and lightly colored, remove them from the oven.

Dip a natural bristle brush (wool brush) into the egg wash.

Wipe off the excess egg wash along the side of the bowl until almost no egg drips down from the brush. This step is very important—do not use too much egg wash, otherwise the color will get too dark and look bad. Always use a natural bristle (wool) brush for egg wash. Unless you are very skilled, I don’t recommend a silicone brush.

Lightly brush the surface of the mooncakes. It’s better to brush a very thin layer and do several coats, rather than loading the brush with too much egg wash at once. Too much egg wash may run into the grooves. We don’t need to brush the grooves—only the raised patterns on the surface. This will make the design look more three-dimensional.

To repeat once more: only brush the raised patterns on the surface; don’t brush the sides. If the pattern is sparse or concentrated in just one area, only brush where there are patterns; flat areas don’t need to be brushed.

Watch this short video: only brush where there are patterns, i.e. the raised parts.

After brushing all the mooncakes, return the tray to the oven.

Bake for another 5–10 minutes after brushing the egg wash. Why such a big time range? Because home ovens heat unevenly: some spots may be done in 5–6 minutes, while others may need 10 minutes or even longer. Watch them closely while baking. Once the surface turns golden, you can take that tray out first. Any that are not fully baked can go back in. If you want to remove the ones that are done first, let the whole tray cool slightly outside the oven before handling them, because they’re soft while hot and hard to pick up. Once they firm up a bit, you can remove the finished ones. Then put the underbaked ones back into the oven and continue baking.

Freshly baked mooncakes don’t look very nice in color at first. That’s fine; after the oil returns, the color will become more even and deeper.

Mooncakes are soft when they’re just out of the oven and will harden after cooling. Then you need to leave them for about 2–3 days to allow the oil to return. After that, the mooncakes will soften again. If you use homemade syrup, the oil-return process is faster.

These are mooncakes after the oil has returned. In reality they are a bit darker and shinier than in the picture, and the patterns look more three-dimensional.

For other sizes of mooncakes, refer to the pictures for comparison.

If the surface is sticky to the touch after the oil has returned, it means the mooncakes were underbaked; you can put them back in the oven to bake a bit more. Once the mooncakes are completely cooled, you can package them. The oil-return process doesn’t require a special environment—you can let them sit in the packaging, leave them uncovered, cover them with plastic wrap, or store them in an airtight container...