Snowskin Mooncake Recipe

I'm submitting this post to Aspiring Bakers #11: Mid-Autumn Treats (September 2011) hosted by Happy Home Baking because this is my first time making pastry food, so I might just try my luck! 

Every year, around the month of September or early October, I'll be very happy and always looking forward to the Mid-Autumn Festival (中秋节) because I'll get to eat one of my favorite Chinese bakery products, Mooncakes! 
Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Mooncake festival is the third major festival among four most important Chinese festivals that falls on the 15th day of the eighth month according to the Chinese calendar. It is celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese people. This festival is for lunar worship and moon watching (you'll notice that the moon is especially big, round and bright on this day). We celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival by offering Mooncakes, an indispensable delicacy on this occasion, between friends or on family gatherings. We'll also carry brightly lit lanterns and light up lots of candles around the neighbourhoods, playgrounds and parks.

These are my precious cute paper lanterns that we hung in our previous house last year. (Year 2010)

The girls were delighted when I brought them downstairs with their Hello Kitty musical lanterns, some fireworks and candles. (Year 2010)

We'd lots of fun even if it was just playing with fireworks and candles among ourselves under the void-deck. (Year 2010)

After playing, we'd our stall-bought mooncakes and fruits. (Year 2010)

Every year w/o fail, we'd go back to my parents-in-laws' house to have dinner together. (Year 2010)

This year's Mid-Autumn Festival is very special and different for us as compared to the previous years because I made my own mooncakes, my very first home-made mooncakes!  Every year, I'll buy lots of mooncakes that come in different shapes (round or rectangular), sizes (big or small), traditional styles or contemporary styles for both our parents and ourselves. In my family, only me and my Mom eat mooncakes and I'd prefer snowskin mooncakes with salted egg yolks. My Mom would always keep those with yolks for me and now I keep the yolks for both my girls. They LOVE the yolks so much and would always fight over it! 
Why did I waited so long to make my own mooncakes no doubt the fact that I LOVE it so much and get to eat only once every year!? I seldom cooked after the birthed of my youngest girl, Cheeky as she's a super, extremely difficult baby to take care of. I even had to carry her in one hand while using the other to sweep the floor using the magic-clean stick!  YEAH! I'm not exaggerating and all thanks to her for all my muscles now! Argh! It's only until Cathy, my helper came last year then I started to cook almost everyday otherwise we'd either buy back home, went over my parents or parents-in-laws house for dinner. Lucky it's all over now! 
I never know the process of making mooncakes is actually so simple and easy, especially the snowskin ones, until I saw Ann's recipes! Ann of Anncoo Journal is a Singaporean who has a flare in baking cakes, cookies and pastries. She's one of the really creative and talented bakers I've came across during my past 6 months of blogging. Not only is she good at all these, she made beautiful handicrafts too! Hop over to Ann's blog after reading my post to check it out yourself and you'll believe what I say. 
I went through every of Ann's recipes for snowskin mooncakes plus a few googled sites and thought maybe I should try making my own too...? I bought all the ingredients needed and tried. 
I was over the moon when I finally succeeded after two failures in making the skin!  My girls were the first to try on the mooncakes and they told me it's nice, smelt and tasted like those selling outside. Then I asked my Mom to try and she agreed but the skin was slightly too thick so for my 2nd batch, I rolled the skin real thin, almost translucent. This time, even my hubby and our friends praised me! They even asked to have more next year! 
**I used Ann's recipe with slight modifications as I couldn't get the same type of flour that Ann used. The weight of both the skin and lotus paste fillings are based on my own estimations. It depends on the sizes of mooncake moulds used.

   Ingredients :

• 300g Snowskin flour [from Gim Hin Lee] (I used glutinous rice flour instead as I couldn't find any Snowskin flour and this could be the reason why I can't get the right texture)
• 1Kg White lotus paste + *Pumpkin Seeds
• 200g Icing sugar (Sifted)
• 95g Criso Shortening [Ann used mooncake shortening from Sunlik]
• Some Cooked Glutinous Rice Flour (Gao Fen 糕粉)
• 250g Pandan water (Cold)
• ⅓ Tsp Banana Essence (Optional) 
• Food/Natural Coloring (Optional)

*I added about half packet of pumpkin seeds to the lotus paste and mixed them together before dividing into balls of 28g each. This can be done first before making the skin, cover with cling paper and set aside in fridge.

    Method :

1. Boil 1 L of water with 6 pandan leaves and store in fridge one or two days ahead
2. In a large bowl, add snowskin flour and icing sugar together, mix well. Then add in shortening to mix roughly using a spatula or wear a disposal hand glove.
3. Make a well in the center of mixture, add banana essence and slowly pour in cold pandan water, bit by bit until you get the right consistency of the dough.
4. Knead to soft dough (a bit sticky), cover and let it rest for 10mins. Then knead dough again until it is soft and not sticky anymore.
5. Divide dough into equal portion, add food/natural coloring (for different types of fillings-28g of balls each) and knead well until color is even. Divide into smaller balls of 25g each.
6. Flatten dough into a round shape with a rolling pin or your palm, place a ball of filling in the middle, wrap and seal it up.
7. Roll it into a ball and dust with some cooked glutinous rice flour (Gao Fen 糕粉). Dust the inside of the mould also and shake off excess flour.
8. With the sealed part of the skin facing down to the imprints of the mould (this is to cover-up the sealed part), press the ball down firmly. Knock mooncake out from mould and store in air-tight container.
9. Repeat with the rest of the dough and fillings until finish.
10. Chill snowskin mooncakes in fridge up to at least 4hrs before consume.

These are the first batch I made for my Mom to pray.

I made these using my bento egg moulds for the girls.

These are the 2nd batch I made for my parents-in-laws. I rolled the skin REAL thin as compared to the first.

I like these the most! Made with my heart-shaped egg mould and sprinkled some tiny hearts candies so that it don't looked so plain. Specially for our friend, an old pal of my hubby, a very nice guy and his friendly girlfriend. They really liked it and even asked for more next year. 

I love this Hello Kitty mooncake too! Cheeky told me this is too cute and pretty that she don't bare to eat it! Hahaha

Cheeky made this in school but she didn't eat. She gave all to Cathy but wanted her to keep one little piece for me. She's really a sweetie to both of us, whatever she has, we're the ones she'll think of besides her sister. Love U, Baby!

We can have our favorite mooncakes whenever we feel like eating and needn't wait 'til next year from now on!  

Remember to visit Ann at Anncoo Journal to check out all her creative, beautiful and mouth-watering recipes! Enjoy and have a great week ahead! 

Oyakodon Bentos Recipe (Chicken and Egg Rice Bowl)

Hi everyone! How have you been lately? I'm so sorry for 'MIA-ing' (missing in action) quite some time but I missed all of you! Although I've not been posting for a month now (exactly one month from my last post), I still do visit and trying my very best to catch up on those blogs that I've been missing out but all are too fast for me or am I just too slow in reading!?  For those blogs that I didn't follow up or had missed quite a few posts, I'm really very sorry about that. I'll try my best to keep myself from other distractions and hopefully I'm able to finish reading all your posts, okay? Thank you very much for your understanding. 
So, what have I been doing during my absence? Well, in fact I'm not really as busy as you may think that I don't have the time to blog.*blushing* I'm just too lazy to blog, no motivations to blog, just don't feel like blogging outta sudden and I don't even know the reason behind 'til now. That's alright, just forget it because I'm back on the blog now! 
I don't only fancy cute stuffs and bento gadgets which are mostly from Japan, I'm also a SUPERB BIG fan of Japanese cuisine! I just love everything about Japan to the extreme, I feel! I wish to go Japan one day (it's so expensive), I wish to learn Japanese language (it's so difficult), I wish to learn cooking my favorite Japanese dishes, which is the easiest, the most possible among all my wishes and I'm still learning now! I even wished so much that I'm a Japanese girl when I was young! Silly huh!?  
I'm sure most of you are already very familiar who Nami of Just One Cookbook is. She shares the most authentic Japanese dishes with all her clear and detailed step-by-step photos, links and explanations in her blog. I was very happy when I stumbled upon her blog while hopping around few months back. Do visit her fantastic blog full of delicious food if you haven't do so! You'll be thrilled to bits just like me even if Japanese food is not your most favorite! 
These Oyakodon bentos were cooked on 5 July 2011. Yes... yup I know... I'm always SOO late in postings but late posts are better than none at all, right? EXCUSE! 
I used Nami's Oyakodon Recipe. Everything remain the same as Nami's recipe except the frozen chicken cutlets which I used instead of chicken thighs because the girls prefer fried chicken cutlets and instant dashi powder instead of dashi-jiru.

Messy's Oyakodon Bento

   Ingredients For 2 Servings :

• 2   chicken thighs, rinsed and patted dry (I used 2 frozen chicken cutlet, deep fried until golden brown and set aside)
• 2    eggs
• ½   onion, thinly sliced
• 3    Tbsp. Mirin
• 1     Tbsp. cooking sake
• 2    Tbsp. soy sauce
• 1     Tbsp. sugar
• 1     cup Dashi-Jiru (I used instant dashi powder)
• Chopped Mitsuba for garnish (or finely chopped green onions)

   How to cook :

1. Cut the chicken diagonally (Use Sogigiri cutting technique) 
2. Crack eggs into a bowl. DO NOT BEAT. Instead, hold chopsticks with the tip of chopsticks touching the bottom of the bowl, and write “Z” a couple of times. Set aside. 
3. In a shallow frying pan, heat Mirin and cooking sake and bring it to a boil. 
4. Add soy sauce, sugar, and Dashi-Jiru and bring it to a boil. 
5. Spread the onion into the pan, and then place chicken on top. Lower the heat and cook covered for a few minutes until the chicken is cooked through and onion is soft. 
6. Slowly add the eggs. Instead of pouring at once, evenly pour into the pan. 
7. Use chopsticks and poke around the ingredients so eggs will disperse evenly. Shake the pan so the ingredients move around and bottom doesn’t stick to the pan. 
8. Put Japanese rice into a large serving bowl. 
9. When the egg is cooked about 80%, add Mitsuba (or green onions) and turn off the heat after 1 minute. 
10. Pour the mixture on top of rice and pour extra sauce. Serve immediately.

Cheeky's Oyakodon Bento 

I cooked this after sending Messy to school. My hubby and I love it! 

I'd love to try using the chicken thighs the next time I cook this dish to compare the differences and I reckon Nami's original recipe will be tastier because the fried cutlets turned soggy after awhile. I tried Nami's few recipes too and will be posting on them in the near future as now I'm writing my posts according to the dates I cooked the dishes. 

I'm linking this post to Nami's Oyakodon Recipe so that you can refer to her clear and beautiful step-by-step photo instructions. Hope you enjoy it!