Traditional Chinese Mooncakes for the Mid-Autumn Festival (Red bean and egg yolk) | The Woks of Life

Well, it certainly looks like one. Okay. Unsupervised. Yes. Concerns. I have a lot of concerns. Today we're making red bean mooncakes, uh, which we've done on the blog, but we did them as Sioux style mooncakes. So like the flaky pastry little circles. This time we're going to make the classic sort of like cake like mooncake with the molded pattern in the top. And it's a big deal because it's the first time our mom has entrusted us with the making of said mooncakes. We saw her last night. She gave us a cooler and it had some salted duck egg yolks, some golden syrup that she made and she texted us the recipe and was like, here you go. So this is like a big deal. This is like second generation for the first time taking on a project like this. Anytime we've made them on the blog, our mom has been like start to finish. She's just done everything. She doesn't trust anybody else to be involved. So she just does the whole thing. Yeah. So this is a big deal. This is a very big deal. That we are being entrusted with it. To our grandma, who's probably going to distribute them probably as gifts to her friends and you know, write about her charming granddaughters. We want to do a good job and yeah, this is important. There's a lot. Hopefully we do a good job. So today's date is August 30th, which means that the Mid-Autumn Festival is in 11 days, September 10th. We are down to the wire on these mooncakes because Costco has literally been selling mooncakes for months now. I think it was probably July or June when we spotted mooncakes first. Yep. Very reasonably priced, might I add. Okay, so at Costco, they're not that expensive, but anywhere else you're talking $15 to $20 per mooncake. For a box of four, $50. And if you want a really nice ornamental tin, $20 for one. However, mooncakes that you buy from the store have really been sitting around for a long time. That's one of the great things about making mooncakes at home. There's less preservatives, they're fresh, they're fragrant, and it's a labor of love. It's a big gesture. It's a really fun project. It's a fun project and it's a big gesture to whoever you're giving them to just to be like, here, here are the mooncakes that I made. What's your favorite flavor? Or combination. So maybe Unpopular Opinion or maybe other second generation or other ABCs can relate to this. But I don't like mooncakes that much. I never really have. I don't like mooncakes that much. I never really have. But I will say that it's a tradition and it's one that I, you know, when I have kids that I'm going to keep alive when Mid-Autumn Festival comes around because it's just important. It's just important to keep these traditions around. And, you know, if I can teach my kids how to make mooncakes, I will. I will say if I am eating a mooncake, I prefer the lotus paste. That's my favorite. Good choice. We've done that on the blog already. So today we're giving you guys something new. We're doing red bean and I think a lot of people really like red bean. I think red bean is a classic flavor. Maybe the most popular. It's one of those very crowd pleasing flavors. Like Sarah, I didn't always used to like mooncakes. In fact, when we were kids, mooncakes would roll out and they were so beautiful. And as a little kid, you're like, wow, oh my God, it must taste delicious. And it's not like it's bad, but it's a very distinctive texture. So I was a sneaky little kid and I used to take a fork and I would eat around the perimeter of the mooncake and I would only eat the crust with a tiny bit of red bean. Animal. Yes. Raised by wolves. Yes. Well, no, our parents aren't wolves, but that is very animalistic behavior. Mooncake Adventure is off to a shaky start. Right. But it's a shaky start with Ma's golden syrup. It's not this generation's fault. Hello? Yeah. Uh, the golden syrup is kind of hard. Like it doesn't flow. Should I microwave it? You should Google, honey. Google. I don't know. Okay. Okay, bye. How do you soften hard golden syrup? Yeah, it says the syrup will turn hard after cooling if you cook for too long. Yeah, it looks like she overcooked it slightly. Yeah, if you see the golden syrup in here versus the golden syrup in our, on our website, it's quite a bit darker. This one. We were able to salvage the situation just by adding some hot water and mixing it until it thinned out. Which is a bit loose just because it's hot. So we just have to let it cool. Okay, so now we're going to make the mooncake dough. And it actually is really simple. It has only four ingredients in it. So what we need is some oil. I have peanut oil here, but if you have a peanut allergy, you could also use corn oil. And we have the golden syrup, which we were having our issues with earlier. But I think that it's looking really good right now. It's like a nice, pourable consistency. And we have the correct amount. Three quarters of a cup plus one tablespoon. Very specific. And then we have this potassium carbonate solution, which is an alkaline solution. You'll see this used in to make noodles and like certain other types of dough, like this mooncake dough. And it actually is what's going to give the mooncakes that kind of golden amber color. And it actually offers a certain flavor as well. And then we just need all purpose flour. Two and three quarters of a cup. Pretty simple. So I'm going to really try to get every last drop because this recipe is really precise. And I want to make sure that all of the syrup gets in there. Which is why actually, I mean, we are, we're using U.S. measurements here, like cups and spoons, but if you have a digital scale, even better. And we're going to be using a scale when we actually like measure out the filling and the dough just to make sure that each mooncake looks exactly the same and is exactly the same size. So we need half a cup of the peanut oil. Pour that in. And again, I'll use the spatula to kind of really scrape every last bit into there. Okay, so now the final wet ingredient is the potassium carbonate. I need a teaspoon and a half, so. I can just mix all this stuff up. Just kind of want to emulsify the oil and syrup together and make sure that it's all sort of really well combined before you add the flour. Now I'm going to add the flour. So we need two and three quarters of a cup of flour. For all you guys who are using precise weight measurements, that's 385 grams. So I already measured it out on my scale and I'm just going to add it. And what's really important at this step, as my mom said to me in her text when she sent me this recipe earlier today, is you don't want to overwork the dough. You just kind of want to fold it in and it should only take a minute or two. So you want to avoid overworking the dough at this stage. So I'm just going to kind of mix it until most of the flour is incorporated. So at this point, a rubber spatula is kind of your best tool. I guess the dough looks almost like a cookie dough. If you want to do this ahead of time, you can chill the dough overnight. Or if you have less time, like we have today, we don't have a ton of time because we're making these mooncakes to give to our grandma tomorrow. You could chill it for a minimum of one hour. And you want to put it in an airtight container before you do that. So I'm going to transfer it to like a little Tupperware kind of container after this. So we have our salted duck egg yolks here. And you can buy these from the grocery store already. They're already cooked. The yolks just come in a vacuum sealed package like this. And we have to cook them before we put them in the mooncakes. You don't technically have to do this in other recipes that my mom has posted in the past. She hasn't always done that. But it's a nice step just to sort of like bring out the oil and the aroma of the egg yolks. So you just put them out on parchment. And we're going to bake them at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. They're ready to come out. And as you can see, just that little time in the oven has made them sort of release their oils. I mean, they're already cooked when they're in the package. So you're not so much cooking them as you are heating them up and just like getting them to release flavor. Look at how pretty they look. Each ball of red bean paste should weigh 58 grams. So we use an electric scale to make sure it's precise and that we get exactly 24 mooncakes. This part's really straightforward. Just shape it as you would a meatball, but make sure you pack it together as you go until you get a round ball. So now it's time to put the egg yolks into the center of the filling. So we only have 14 egg yolks, so we only have to do this for 14 of them. But basically... So what about the ones that don't have the egg yolk? So those are just going to be slightly smaller. I don't think it's going to be a problem. Like flatter? Yeah, they'll be flatter. Like when you press them into the mooncake mold, it's just going to be a little bit shorter and that should be fine. So you have your ball of red bean paste and you're going to sort of flatten it. As you can see, my hands are kind of greased or oiled from the red bean paste. You can lightly oil your hands first if you want. That just makes it kind of easier to work with. So I'm just going to flatten it and just try to like keep it somewhat squeezed together because it's going to want to crack a little bit. So you want to get it to like yay big, like, I don't know, two and a half inches in diameter. Try to keep all the paste there. Then you take an egg yolk, put it right in the middle. Then you're going to kind of just like close your hand to squeeze the filling around the egg yolk. And you're going to see cracks and it's going to kind of want to break on you, but it's okay. You just keep squeezing it together until the egg yolk is completely obscured by the red bean paste. And then once you're at this stage, you just want to kind of roll it. And you're like a cup, like keeping your hands cupped kind of helps keep the dough or keep the red bean paste all together. You just kind of roll it until it looks somewhat smooth. You almost want it to have like kind of a shiny look, you know, you want to like make sure that it's like nice and moist. I actually don't like rolling it out crazy. Like I just cup it between my two palms because sometimes I get worried that if you like vigorously roll it, then it can break up the red bean. Yeah, that's why I said like when you're rolling it, you kind of have to keep your hands cupped or like little bits of red bean go flying. And after these are assembled, we're just going to put them in the fridge covered because you don't want them to dry out. And we're going to put them in the refrigerator until we're ready to actually like make the mooncakes with the dough, with the molds and all that, all that. Yeah, all that little bit of scary stuff. That's going to be like the moment of truth. Are we making mooncakes or are we shaming our family? I was trying to think of a playful pun. Yeah, I don't know. Straight for shaming our family. I mean, there's really I mean, there's no shame. The fact that we're even making these is like a big deal. Yeah. It's a big deal. A for effort so far. Yes, exactly. Even if your mooncakes turn out kind of wonky, like they're special because you made them. Don't let me shame you, audience. Before we start, we bought these plastic mooncake molds online. They come in tons of different shapes and patterns, and you can also find old school wooden molds. But if you wanted to save some money, you can also just flatten your mooncakes into round disks using a floured glass and then smooth it out with your hands. So it is mooncake time. We are assembling. This is the kind of the most high pressure time, but also no biggie. I keep telling yourself I'm fine. OK, so we have our dough. And basically what you want to remember in this entire process is lightly flour, lightly flour everything. You're lightly flouring this dough ball. You're lightly flouring the rolling pin. You're going to lightly flour the inside of this mold. And so what I do for that is I just like put a bunch of flour in it and I kind of will like tap it like like you're flouring a cake pan, like when you're greasing and flouring cake pans. And then you just want to tap it out. So that's nice and floured because you want to make sure that once you the mooncake goes into that mold, that it's going to come out. So OK, so I have a nice even-ish flouring job here. And I'm going to start rolling. And you're going to want the diameter of this dough to be about four and a half inches. And it's going to look really thin, like that aspect of it is sort of one of the more intimidating aspects of making these is like how thin the mooncake dough is that you're sort of wrapping around that filling. But as you'll see, the dough is really pliable and it will crack. It's going to crack. You kind of just got to accept that that's going to happen and not panic because it's OK if it cracks. You just kind of press the pieces back together and you could even patch. You just patch it and I'll show you in a second. So this is looking pretty good. This is about the thickness. And I have here one of my one of my filling balls. So I'm just going to put that down here. And then I'm using I don't know if my mom does this, but I'm doing it because I just want to be extra safe. But I'm going to use like a flat spatula to just lift up the dough. And then I'm going to gently place it over the filling ball. And then so as you can see, this is already cracking and that's OK. You're just going to you're just going to sort of press it to the side of the filling. And the goal is to keep the dough as even all around as possible. And so when you press the mooncake into the mold, you have even dough coverage. And you're not going to hopefully not going to see sort of like bits of filling peeking through the outside. So once it's kind of like mostly conforming to the shape of the filling, you can just flip it over. And then just gently fold over the dough. This one is kind of a mess, but we're doing it. You see how kind of like that doesn't look great. You're like, oh, my gosh, I've completely failed and this is bad, but it's OK. Just breathe and continue. So now I'm going to start sort of like squeezing it between my hands to flatten the dough out. And when I see little holes like like here, I can see a little bit of filling peeking out. I'm just going to sort of like seal it. So I see some parts that are a little bit thicker than others. Which, you know, you want to avoid, but you try your best. And actually, the main goal here not only is to keep it even, but also to make sure there are no air pockets in here. And as you can see, it's a lot smoother. And it doesn't look quite like before where it looked like just scraps of dough. That were all like breaking. So now I'm going to roll it and slightly flour it. You got to keep it floured. So I just noticed that there are these little pieces of dough on the counter. And I'm just going to kind of press that onto areas that I think need it. So like, let's see. It's like this, this area, like it's like looks a little bit darker. So I can tell that the dough is a little bit thinner there. So I'm just going to like press it on there. And just kind of press it in. And that's the beauty of this dough is that it is really pliable and it sort of all sticks back together when you want it to. So just pressing it together and lightly flouring it. Definitely want to make sure that with every mooncake you make that you're lightly flouring this again. Because when you take the mooncake out of the mold, it's going to take most of that flour with it. So you just want to make sure to lightly flour each time. Okay, so I'm putting the mold on top of the dough ball. And I'm just going to press it to the counter so that the mold is making contact with the counter. And now it has this like handy plunger and you just kind of press it until you feel resistance. You want to put like a decent amount of pressure to make sure that the pattern is getting really nicely stamped in there in a kind of a crisp way. So even, firm, pretty firm pressure. And when you're doing this, you'll kind of get a sense. There's the mooncake. It looks really good. Okay, so now we have to mist the mooncakes. And if you have a spray bottle, a clean spray bottle with water, that works. But we don't, I don't have one right now. So you can actually just kind of dip your fingers in water. This is the sort of like budget version. And then just like flick, flick water at the mooncakes. And just like a little bit of moisture here is going to help prevent the mooncakes from cracking as they bake. We have a little bit of crackage on this. Not horrible for a first outing. Yeah, I think they look pretty good. I think this is the best one. That's like pretty flawless. And mine might be worse. So I'm going to put them in the oven and we're going to bake first for five minutes. And after five minutes, we are going to take them out. We are going to brush them with an egg wash to make them nice and shiny. And then we are going to lower the temperature from 325 to 300. So 325 for five minutes and then 300. And we're going to bake them again for 25 minutes after that. Or for 20 minutes. Math is hard. I'm going to prepare the egg wash next. I'm just going to grab an egg. We use eggs from our chickens at home. We use this little guy. The ratio for this is one large egg yolk and three tablespoons of water. Since this egg yolk is pretty small, I'm going to use maybe two tablespoons of water instead. So you want to make sure that the egg wash when you apply it is super even. I have one of these silicone brushes, but ideal is a natural bristle brush because you're going to get sort of more precision with that. But all I have is a silicone one, so we're going to make it work. Big reveal of the baked mooncakes. I think they look pretty good. They look pretty decent. Let's just back up a little bit. I think they look really good. Okay, so you can see where the egg on some of them kind of made it like the pattern is not as visible. Like this one is not bad. This was still pretty. And I think that when they cool, they're going to sort of settle a little bit. Like when a cookie sort of like settles into the chocolate chips, it's going to settle. And then you're going to get even more of like kind of a crisp pattern. But like this one is really nice and crisp. That one's beautiful. Okay, so everyone, these mooncakes need to sit for a day or two. And that is really important to getting that sort of like moist, shiny mooncake look. Because these look kind of dry right now. That's normal. Don't panic. It's just sort of like it needs to sort of like, you know, when you leave the banana bread out on the counter overnight after you've baked it, and then the next morning you're like, mmm, this is like even more moist. Because you basically left it in like a container overnight to sort of absorb moisture. Actually, in our banana bread recipe, that's like part of the instructions. Like eat it the next day, not the first day. That's the move. Anyway, so tomorrow, these are going to look a lot shinier. They're going to look a little bit sort of like more amber colored. And then we're going to be able to give them to our grandma. And then she can give them out as gifts. I'm pretty pleased with ourselves. For a first time, this is pretty decent. Yeah. The next day, we woke up to our beautiful mooncakes. As you can see, they're shiny and golden. And sure, there's some cracks and patches that you can see, but we're pretty happy with these. You can let them sit out for up to two days, but one day ended up being just fine. The only thing left, the moment of truth. Very fresh tasting. Very moist. And not too sweet. That's how I like it. Yes, it's very good. What are some pointers for making successful mooncakes? I think the pointer of making successful mooncake is to make your own mooncake. I want everybody to try a fresh made mooncake because it tastes absolutely so different than what you buy. You know what, nothing beats fresh made mooncakes. Just nothing. Okay, so that's why the biggest pointer that I can give to everybody is to make your own. Look at that. This year, I actually made Sarah and Kaitlyn made the mooncakes. And I think it's time for them to learn how to do this and to carry on the torch. And they did an absolutely wonderful job. Every one of the mooncakes came out beautiful. To be clear, Ma was supposed to come over and make these and then we were going to photograph them. But then she was like, oh no, I'm not doing that, you guys do it. Which is good because now I feel pretty confident in our ability to make mooncakes. And here they are. Thank you. And sometimes, you know why, you gotta force the kids a little bit. You know, just push them and nudge them a little bit. And then, you know what, they'll surprise you. Do they look like up to scratch? Do they look like up to your standard? Absolutely. They're beautiful. They're beautiful. Look at it. Just like Stokoe. So how was the recipe as written? I thought that it was pretty easy to follow. What was nice about the recipe was that there were a lot of details. So we do that in our recipes where we put lots of little notes and tips and we're just like, oh. Like when you said to mix the dough and you were like, this should only take one to two minutes. I was like, okay, it's definitely been two minutes so I'll stop now. And that kind of gave me a hint to be like, okay, this is how it should be. And then also like, I felt like the biggest challenge was kind of like putting the dough on top of the, like just forming it around the filling because the dough is so thin. So if you guys at home can see how thin the dough is around that filling, when you're doing it, you're like, oh wow, the dough is cracking and it's like, oh my gosh. And you kind of panic because that's not the way that normal pastry dough behaves. But because it's an oil-based dough, it's also really pliable. So then if it cracks, it's no big deal. Like as I was making it, I realized it's really not a big deal. You just push it back. The reason it cracks is that it's not that it's cracking. It's more like it's melting. Melting. Okay. Because the oil and the sugar and now it's late summer, early fall, and the weather outside is still very, very warm. So it's more like it's melting. That's why it's best that you chill them. And then you, you know, take out a couple of, you know, dough pieces and work at a time. Roll them out and form your ball and form your, and then put in the mold and form your mooncake. That is the best thing to do. But if you do run into problems where the dough kind of slowly melting, like it wouldn't hold its shape, don't panic either. There's no need to panic. Okay. You can stop your process, cover your filling, make sure that it doesn't dry out and put the dough back in the refrigerator and wait like, I don't know, 30 minutes and then proceed. Yeah. And the dough is really forgiving. Like if I messed up and I was like, oh no, it's like, and I wanted to, I just squished it back together, put it back into a ball and put it back in the refrigerator. And it's totally fine. So once you've rolled it out, it's not like the point of no return. You can go back and kind of squish it back together and start over, which was really, really good actually. I guess when I said earlier, when I said there's really no pointers, I guess there are pointers. Of course there are pointers. I just don't like them. It's not like it's medicine. It's not that sweet. Some people aren't a fan of the egg yolk, but actually the little bit of salted duck egg yolk really contrasts nicely with like the light sweetness of the red bean. And it's just a really good combination. I made these last night and Justin's already eaten three of them. Three? So yeah, it's a very, very rewarding process. And I'm so glad to see that more and more readers are making their own mooncakes because as the mooncake prices rises, I mean, I've seen them in like $80. For like how many? Four. Four, they're like $20 a mooncake. And meanwhile, you spend a little time and you can't, this recipe makes 24, which is six boxes. You know, crazy. There's no comparison. And taste-wise, you got to try it for yourself. They are very good. Yeah.