Mooncake – Flavor of Mid Autumn festival

The Moon festival (also called the Mooncake or Mid-Autumn festival) falls on September 8th in 2014. Every year on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar, when the moon is at its maximum brightness for the entire year, Vietnam & other asia countries celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival.

The festival celebrates three fundamental concepts which are closely tied to one another:

• Gathering, such as family and friends coming together, or harvesting crops
• Thanksgiving, to give thanks for the harvest, or for harmonious unions
• Praying (asking for conceptual or material satisfaction), such as for babies, a spouse, beauty, longevity, or for a good future

The original of Mooncake is a Chinese bakery product traditionally eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The festival is for lunar worship and moon watching, when mooncakes are regarded as an indispensable delicacy. Mooncakes are offered between friends or on family gatherings while celebrating the festival.

As the requests of many visitors, Footprint would love to sharing the recipe to make Mooncake at home for our friends over the world as well as anybody concerns:

First, we need to prepare the necessary Ingredients:

For covers:
300g wheat flour
40g vegetable oil
5ml Potassium carbonated (nước tro tàu) – Buy at Vietnamese Markets
200ml sugar syrup.

For mixture on top of cakes:
2 yolks
10ml water.

For fillings (8 cakes with 150g per):
100g roasted water melon seeds
100g roasted almond (separate half)
100g candies lotus seeds (separate half)
100g candies pumpkin seeds
50g ginger jam
8 yolks of salted eggs
100g roasted peanut
Lime leaves (sliced long and thin)
150g mixture grease + sugar (boil grease, slice it into small cubes and marinate with sugar in proportion 2:1, wait in 1 day)
100g sausage
5ml sesame oil
5 flavors flour (ngũ vị hương)
10ml distilled pomelo drops
Salt, sugar syrup, oil
Soft moon cake flour
Moon cake patterns.

Everything we got, Let’s make it:

Making sugar syrup to add into cover cakes:
Step 1: Add 1 kg sugar into 1 liter water, stir well.
Step 2: Put on cooking stove, cook until it boils; turn off the heat. You should not stir when boiling.
Step 3: For helping to keep moon cakes longer, after cook mixture sugar in 20 minutes, you add more lime juice (1 fruit) into pot and continue to cook more than 5 minutes and turn off the heat.

Making fillings:

Step 4: Mix all ingredients for fillings together.

Step 5: Soft moon cake flour is the adhesive, so after mix all ingredients of fillings together, continue to add this flour and knead well.

Step 6: Separate into small cubes (depend on your flavor).

Step 7: Clean gently yolks of salted eggs, do not break it. Soak them into mixture white wine with some sliced ginger in 4 – 5 minutes; next bring to steam in 10 – 15 minutes.

Making covers:

Step 8: Pour wheat flour into big bowl, add oil, nước tro tàu and sugar syrup on the center. Knead gently and well until it is soft.

Step 9: Separate into small cubes equally. Roll thinly and add filling with 1 yolk of salted egg on the center and cover it well.

Step 10: Spread a little oil around moon cake pattern edges. Next, put one by one moon cake into pattern and push firmly, especially around the edges. Then, strike strongly to get moon cake out of pattern.

Step 11: Mix 2 yolks with 10 ml water.

Step 12: Set up the heat of grilling stove about 200 – 210 degree in 4 – 6 minutes before grilling cakes. Arrange moon cakes on tray added oil; bring them to grill in 5 minutes. Next, put them out quickly from grilling stove, spray a little water on cakes and wait for 5 minutes. And then use small brush to spread mixture yolks in step 11 on top and bring to grill again at 220 degree in 3 – 5 minutes. When moon cakes turn brown yellow, turn off the heat and get them out.

Finally, you basically finish. Beside of this filling, you can make grilled moon cakes with mung bean fillings (bánh trung thu đậu xanh nướng) or any bean you love. Bring them to steam and grinded well. Then mix with a little sugar and you can have other stunning fillings for moon cakes as you want. Hope you will satisfy with this recipe. Any question, feel free to ask us via customers@footprint.vn or at our facebook page. Good luck for your cooking.

Source: Vietnamese Food