Snow Skin Mooncake - My journey

The mid-autumn festival is approaching again. Last year, I was wowed by the display of mooncakes by bloggers all over the world. Especially my aunt who enticed me to the world of making mooncakes at home. However, I wasn't able to locate the materials and ingredients in Perth then, hence did not attempt to make any.

My grandmother heard of my interest in making mooncakes at home and bought a couple of mooncake moulds. On my most recent trip back to SG, I made sure I packed those mooncake moulds in my luggage back to Perth. Now, because they are made of wood, I decided to place them in my hand luggage (see how precious they are?) so that I can easily declare them. Funnily enough, the Singapore customs stopped me and wanted to have a look at it after x-raying my bag. The Chinese guy didn't even know that was a mooncake mould! Maybe they thought it was a weapon. LOL.

Back in Perth though, the customs officer took it out of my bag and said "AH! Mooncakes! Oh yes, it's nearly that time of the year again. I see that you are going to make some yourself at home?" Yup, that's right. An Australian officer instantly knew what it was. Perhaps the Singaporean officer only ate store bought mooncakes, hence he no longer know that mooncakes can be made at home too! Obviously with the growing number of Asians in Perth, the mooncake mould must be something the Australian officer see often.

Back to my attempt. It took me the whole of a Sunday afternoon to make this. I wasn't too happy with the large snowskin mooncake and had lots of difficulties with them. Soon afterward, I decided to stick on mastering the smaller ones first...Knocking the mooncakes out of the mould was my problem. I realized quickly that you need to coat it with cornflour first so that the mooncake fall out of the mould easily.

Certainly I'm going to be trying the traditional ones next. Given the price of snowskin mooncakes in Perth (2 small ones for AU$6!!!!), I think I saved heaps this year....

You can see that the mooncakes gradually looked nicer..Compare the big one withe small ones!

1st attempt
Looks odd!
Excess skin at the bottom.
Too much filling! It's nearly bursting there.
Slowly getting it.
One of the last ones. It's pretty! And I can see the flower pattern on it now.
One of the innards of the mooncake. The skin is slightly too thick.
Much better?

Snowskin Mooncakes (1 huge one and 18 small ones)
115grams Hong Kong Flour steamed for 15 mins and cooled
115 fried glutinous rice flour
190grams of icing sugar
1 tablespoon of butter or shortening
5 tablespoons of cold water*
2 tsp of pandan essence
2 tablespoons of hongkong flour mixed with 2 tablespoon of water (paste).

Filling
350 grams of pure lotus paste

Method
1) Sieve fried glutinous flour with hongkong flour. Add icing sugar. Make a well and add shortening/butter, pandan essence, water and hot paste. Knead till smooth (may take 5-10 minutes). Roll dough and wrap lotus paste.Dust it lightly with corn flour. Press into mooncake mould. Knock mooncake out from mould and chill. Serve with tea.

*I used more than 15 tablespoons of water!!! I think it might be the humidity of the countries? The air is alot drier in Australia, hence more water is needed?