Snowskin Mooncakes for Chinese New Year

Call me weird if you want even if that's stating the obvious, because we made Snowskin Mooncakes for Chinese New Year. 

I do know that mooncakes are normally consumed and gifted during the August Moon Harvest Festival, but since the flood happened, my shipment which had our mooncake molds got delayed, and Tim brought us the ingredients from Singapore, Sofia and I have been waiting since October for the next Chinese Holidays... which happens to be Chinese New Year!!! 

Snowskin Mooncakes are similar to mochi in texture.
They are refrigerated and not baked,
and they quite popular in Singapore and Hong Kong.

When we lived in Singapore, Sofia and I enrolled in a Tots with Mom Can Bake class to learn how to make it. It's surprisingly very easy.

Sofia at Tots Can Bake when she was less than 3 years old.
August Moon Festival, Singapore 2010

The kids made kiddie mooncakes.

Right after the class, the first thing I did was buy ingredients to make sure
we could make it at home. Easy Peasy.

WHAT YOU NEED: 

These are the things I have no idea how to find in Manila so I just asked Tim to bring it for us from Singapore.

Fried Glutinous Flour (or Kou Fien)

Lotus Paste (maybe you can find this in Chinatown)
They also have other fillings like: Red Bean, Green Tea, Durian, etc.

Green Pandan Flavor and Purple Yam Flavor
These are my open bottles from Singapore

You'll also need other ingredients that are easier to find.

Confectioners or Icing Sugar

A few Fresh Pandan Leaves

Shortening

Making the Snowskin Mooncakes are so easy. Sofia and her yaya can do it by themselves, I just told them what to do because my nails were newly manicured.

The first thing you need to do is make Pandan Juice,
cool it, and measure 175ml.

You can make Pandan Juice by boiling a few Pandan leaves in water. Once it's at room temperature, you can refrigerate it so it's cool when you start making the mooncakes.

Measure 150g Glutinous Flour

200g Icing Sugar

Sift if your dry ingredients are lumpy

Measure 50g Shortening

Mix your dry ingredients with the shortening 

Then add the pandan juice

Mix it well until all the liquid is absorbed and you can make the dough one big ball. If you are only using one color, you can already add a few drops of the color/flavor paste in the pandan juice.

However, because we wanted to make a green and purple batch, we split my dough into two before putting in the coloring.

Half the dough with a few drops of Purple Yam Paste

The other half with the Green Pandan Paste

Just start kneading the dough from the outside until the colors
 get mixed so you don't end up with green fingers.

Sofia mixed the green with only a little help.

It should look like this when the color is evenly mixed.

Then the next thing to do, is to prepare the filling.

Get a teaspoon-full of Lotus Paste

Roll...

It should end up looking like a small ball.
If you want to be precise, 10g works well for us.

For the assembly, make sure your mooncake molds are thoroughly cleaned beforehand.

We have a Mickey Mouse and fish traditional mold,
but we normally aren't able to use it because
it has to be fully dry or the dough will stick. 

The plastic mold are so much easier to use.
Just flour the molds well before using them.

You need to get a small piece of dough, roll it in your hand,
then flatten it.
30 grams works well for us.

Then you have to put the lotus paste in the middle
and wrap the dough around it.

You can also flour your hands, so it's easier to handle the dough and it won't keep on sticking to your fingers.

Once you have a filled fough ball,
just press it into the floured mold. 

To make your mooncakes look nicer, make sure you put the smooth part of the dough ball at the bottom, and place the part where the dough meets on top, facing you.

Then you just tap the molds on all sides,
working on a clean surface.

The mooncakes will just fall out by itself if your molds are well-floured.

You can also mix dough colors to get this effect.

We ended up with all these mooncakes.
More green was eaten because they got made first.

You can already eat Snowskin Mooncakes after making them, but they taste better when refrigerated.

Happy Chinese New Year Everyone!!! 

Wishing you a year of good harvest in the Year of the Snake! just saying.


For Baking Supplies in Singapore, I go to
Phoon Huat on Bencoolen (Near Bugis)
171 Bencoolen Street Singapore 189641

Tel: 6338 1143 

Operation hours
9:00am to 8:30pm (Monday - Saturday)
9:00am to 6:00pm (Sunday and Public Holidays)
Closed on Eve to 3rd day of Chinese New year
You can visit their website for other branches.


Sofia and I enjoy the toddler + mom Kids/Tots Can Bake classes at Genius R Us
Visit their facebook page for more information.