Making traditional Chinese baked mooncakes can be overwhelming but you can do it with this recipe and straightforward steps. I use lotus seed paste, sweet red bean paste, and meat floss for the filling. All the tips you need to know to make this successfully at home.
Mix golden syrup (or honey), alkaline water, and oil until almost combined. It may not be fully combined if you use golden syrup and that's fine. Just stir to roughly mix it. Sift in flour and stir until combine. Don't overmix it. Cover and rest the dough for at least 1 hour or up to 3 hours
Divide the dough and filling:
Preheat oven to 350 F (180 C). My oven uses bottom heat only, no fan. I use a 50-gram mooncake mould and I use 20 grams of the dough and 30 grams of filling (25 grams lotus seeds + 5 grams pork floss or you can use 30 grams lotus seeds without the pork floss). Please make sure you weight accurately as the mould can only fit in about 50 grams. If you make it bigger than that, the shape will be skewed
Roll the lotus seed paste into a round ball. If you are doing lotus seed paste and pork floss combination, mix sesame seeds with the pork floss. Use your thumb to gently press into the lotus seed paste ball and continue to shape it to look like a "bowl". Put the pork floss inside the cavity (refer to video) and seal it to close
Fill and shape:
This is my favorite way of wrapping. I can get thin skin without much difficulty. Take one dough and divide it into two. Flatten them with your palm. Put the filling on top of one and then cover with another flattened dough (refer to the video for visual). Gently close the gap between the two doughs around the filling and roll into a round smooth ball. Continue with the rest of the dough and filling
Dust the mooncake mould with a thin layer of cake flour and shake off any excess. I also dusted the mooncake dough with thin layer of flour and shake off any excess. Put the dough inside the cavity of the mould and then face it down on a flat surface and gently push down the piston down to imprint the pattern on the dough. Gently push the mooncake out and voila, you have just shaped the dough into a mooncake with imprint on top. Repeat with the rest and dusting with some flour on the mould and the dough each time. Place the shaped dough on a baking sheet lined with a parchment paper
Baking:
Mist the top of the mooncake with some water from about 4-inch distance. You don't want to make the mooncake super wet, just mist it lightly to prevent it from cracking during baking
Put the baking sheet, in the middle of the oven, 3rd rack from the top for my oven. Bake for 9 minutes. The mooncakes will still be pale at this point. Let them cool down for 15 minutes. Please don't skip this step no matter how tempted you are
Beat the egg yolk with a small pinch of salt and water. Don't use silicone brush like I did. You want to use brush with soft bristles. This is very important as we don't want a thick layer of egg wash that will blur the imprint later after baking
Very gently and thinly brush this egg wash on top of the mooncake (don't brush the side, only the surface of the mooncake). If you accidentally brush on too much egg wash, very gently blob it with a paper towel or use a brush to get the extra egg wash off
Place the baking sheet back into the oven, the same position, and bake for another 5-8 minutes or until you have a nice golden brown. Check at 5 minutes to see
Please note that if you use honey, the mooncakes will have lighter golden color compared to using golden syrup
Cooling:
Remove from the oven and let them cool down on the baking sheet for 5 minutes. Don't attempt to move them to cooling rack yet as they are very soft and you will break them trying to lift them up when they are fresh out from the oven like this
After 5 minutes, very gently transfer them to a cooling rack to let them cool down completely. The color will darken too as they cool down
Let the mooncakes age:
Baked mooncakes are not made to be consumed on the same day. You will see that the mooncakes appear very dry when they just come out from the oven on day 1. This is very normal. You might think these mooncakes are going to be super dry and not going to be nice, but on day 3 you will see the oil from the filling has sipped into the dough making it all moist and shiny
After 3 days, you can consume the mooncakes. This is the best time to consume. Keep the rest in the fridge for up to 2 weeks. Homemade version will not last as long as the commercial one because we do not put any other preservative and additives
Video
Notes
You can substitute with an equal amount of good-quality liquid honey. Please make sure that there is no crystals in the honey.