Traditional Mooncake／莲蓉月饼

Mooncake festival is coming soon hehe... I'm going to make mooncake again:). This will be my second year of making homemade mooncake from the scratch. All my recipes are mainly from Aunty Yochana blog. Last week, I have already use 1 kg of lotus seeds to make the lotus paste. The process of making the lotus paste is really tiring. It take hours of remove the skin of the lotus seeds, but the end result is really worth it.

Ingredients of making lotus paste
500g lotus seeds
450g of sugar
350g to 400g of groundnut oil
11/4 tbsp of alkaline water (need it when soaking of the seeds for removing of the skin)
2 tbsp of maltose
1 tbsp of condense milk
1/2 tsp of salt
for the caramel 4 tbsp of sugar

Method:
1. Mix lotus seeds with 11/4 tbsp of alkaline water and 3 tbsp of water, rest for 20 mins. Then pour in the hot boiling water and cover it for about 20-30 mins. Wash away the lotus seeds skin, then add water to the seeds and cook until lotus seeds are soft.

2. Blend the lotus seeds until very fine.

3. Heat the wok and fry the 4 tbsp of sugar with some oil till sugar turns caramel in colour. Pour in the blended lotus seeds, sugar, salt and oil and fry till water dries up.

4. Add in the maltose and condense milk, mix well. cool and keep.


For the Mooncake pastry

350g of Hong kong flour ( I used top flour)
90g of groundnut oil. ( I used cock brand 100percent groundnut oil)
200g of moon cake syrup ( This was made about a year ago, the recipe is from Aunty Yochana blog)
11/4 tsp of alkaline water
1 tsp of molasses (optional to make the pastry darker in colour only)

Method:
Mix all the liquid ingredients together, sift in the flour and mixing it into a soft dough and cover it to rest. Let the dough rest for at least 1 hour, but not more than 18 hours in the room temperature.

Lighty toasted some nut or seed ( walnut, pinenut, olive seeds or melon seeds about 100g) Mix it into the lotus paste. Divide lotus paste into 68g each.

Wrap with 32g of pastry and press into mooncake mould press out from the mould and bake for 10mins, cool slightly then brush with egg glaze( 1 egg + 1 tbsp water + 1tsp of groundnut oil), Then rebake again for another 10mins or till golden brown.