Another fun variation of the traditional Chinese baked mooncake is this chocolate-flavored mooncake pastry filled with sweet bean paste and chocolate. The recipe doesn't use golden syrup and alkaline water.
Mix honey and oil until combined. Sift in flour, salt, and cocoa powder stir until combine. 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) for conventional oven, 330 F (165 C) for convection oven. I use a 50-gram mooncake mould. So I do 18 grams of the dough. For the filling I do 20 grams mung bean paste and 12 grams chocolate chips. Please make sure you weigh accurately as the mould can only fit in roughly about 50 grams (+/- within 5 grams should be okay). It can tolerate a bit bigger, but if you make it way bigger than that, the shape will be skewed
Roll the mung bean paste into a round ball. Use your thumb to gently press into the mung bean paste ball. Put the chocolate inside the cavity and roll it back into a round ball again. Repeat with the rest of the mung bean paste and chocolate. Keep them covered to prevent them from drying out
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. 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 without any cracks. The oil on the dough helps to smooth it out. 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. I did not apply an egg wash as I want to preserve the nice chocolate color
Put the baking sheet, in the middle of the oven, 3rd rack from the top for my oven. Bake for 14-15 minutes in a preheated oven
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
Age the mooncakes:
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 2 or 3 you will see the oil from the filling has sipped into the dough making it all moist
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
After aging for about 3 days, you can also individually wrap it in a plastic wrap and then put in a freezer-friendly bag or conatiner and put them in the freezer for up to one month. Simply thaw at room temperature before serving
Notes
Cocoa powder tends to dry out the dough, so try not to add more than the amount in the recipe.
I didn't add cocoa powder to the mung bean paste because I wanted to be able to see the contrast in color between the filling and the dough and also the chocolate filling. But, feel free to add if you want it all chocolate in color
I used chocolate chip morsels because that's what I had. If you use chocolate squares, the result will be "meltier" when you cut the mooncake open