Colourful lanterns, talks under a starry night, and of course, slices of tasty mooncake! Anchored in history and folklore, the Mid-Autumn Festival is a joyous occasion as friends and family get together to catch up over the indispensable dessert. For this year, instead of buying mooncakes from hotels and restaurants, why not try making some yourself? Trust us; it’s fun and only requires a handful of ingredients. Here’s our guide on how to make mooncakes (including a delectable snow skin mooncake recipe).
How To Make Mooncakes With These Easy Recipes
Lotus Mooncake With Salted Egg
It can’t get any more authentic than a lotus mooncake with savoury salted eggs! Enjoyed by people from all walks of life, generation after generation, this treat consists of a thick lotus seed paste encased by thin moist skin. But perhaps what brings this mooncake to the next level is the inclusion of a whole salted egg yolk. When cooked, the egg becomes soft and crumbly, adding a slight umami flavour profile to the overall dessert.
Don’t forget to use a mooncake mould to create unique designs for your creations! Watch the video above on how to make a lotus mooncake with salted egg, and bookmark the recipe list below for reference.
Recipe Ingredients:
Lotus Seed Filling:
- 120g dried lotus seeds
- 90g sugar
- 70g sunflower oil
Skin:
- 150g golden syrup
- 50g sunflower oil
- ½ tsp lye water
- 220g of all-purpose flour
- Cornstarch for dusting
Egg Wash:
Others:
- Salted egg yolks
Traditional Mooncake With Red Bean Paste
Besides lotus, red bean is another commonly used filling in mooncakes. Also a staple element in Japanese and Korean-styled desserts, red bean paste is sweet with a distinctive graininess that resembles a bread spread. This recipe by renowned Internet-famous professional chef Joshua Weissman is simple and straightforward, letting the mooncake shine with good quality ingredients.
The omission of salted egg yolks here results in a sweeter creation. Hence, adjust the volume of sugar if you’d like your cakes less sweet!
Recipe Ingredients:
Red Bean Filling:
- 200g red beans
- 150g sugar
- 120g peanut oil
- ½ tsp salt
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
Lotus Seed Filling:
- 320g dried lotus seed
- 200g powdered sugar
- 250g oil
Skin:
- 220g all-purpose flour
- 150g golden syrup
- 50g sunflower oil
- ½ tsp lye water
- Cornstarch for coating
Five-Nut Mooncake
A five-nut mooncake takes the traditional mooncake recipe and elevates it with a bunch of nutritious add-ons. In this case, you’ll require pine nuts, pumpkin seeds, walnuts, and more. Although the recipe is extensive, the nutty and savoury notes of the mooncake will make it worth your while. But of course, you can choose to omit certain ingredients if you so please!
Recipe Ingredients:
Filling:
- 45g walnuts
- 45g peanuts
- 40g black and white sesames
- 40g pine nuts
- 40g pumpkin seeds
- 40g sunflower seeds
- 30g candied citrus peel
- 60g candied pineapple
- 75 glutinous rice
- 40g rose syrup
- 30g honey
- 20g oil
- 10g sesame oil
- 25g sugar
- 4g salt
- 2g Szechuan peppercorn powder
- 20-30g water
Skin:
- 75g honey
- 35g oil
- 10g lye water
- 1g salt
- 150g cake flour
Shanghai Mooncake With Taro Filling
The outer layer of a Shanghai mooncake is crisp and crumbly. The texture is almost biscuit-like and has a strong, unmistakable buttery taste to it. As traditions dictate, Shanghai mooncake is usually filled with lotus seed paste and salted egg yolk. However, this recipe opts for a modern approach, using sweet and succulent taro as the star ingredient. That said, salted egg yolk remains a key component to counter-off the sweetness of the taro.
When thinking about how to make a Shanghai mooncake’s crusty pastry, butter is the key! So make sure you have adequate amounts of it when prepping the dough. Coconut oil works too, but some might find the aroma too overpowering.
Recipe Ingredients:
Taro Filling:
- 300g diced taro
- 3-4 pieces pandan leaves
- 90g water
- ⅛ tsp salt
- 110g sugar
- 22g vegetable oil
Skin:
- 175g plain flour
- 25g cornstarch
- 30g milk powder
- 35g icing sugar
- ¼ tsp salt
- 115g diced cold butter
- 30g eggs, lightly beaten
Others:
- Salted egg yolks
- Black sesame seeds
Pandan Jelly Mooncake
If you don’t have an oven or just aren’t keen on the prep work that comes with conventional mooncake making, give this agar-agar recipe a go. What’s more, this jelly mooncake uses all-natural ingredients to recreate the look and feel of its traditional equivalents. For example, the “salted egg yolk” is made using carrot while the filling is a mash-up of coconut milk and pandan leaves.
And yes, you’ll still get the same photogenic layers when cutting through it, provided that you use special moulding trays meant for agar-agar mooncakes.
Recipe Ingredients:
“Egg Yolk” Mix:
- 150g shredded carrot
- 300ml water
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp agar-agar powder
- ¼ tsp jelly powder
Filling:
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp agar-agar powder
- ½ tsp jelly powder
- 250ml water
- 70ml coconut milk
- 1 piece pandan leaf
Skin:
- 3 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp agar-agar powder
- ½ tsp jelly powder
- 3 pieces pandan leaves
- 250ml water
- 60ml coconut milk
Snow Skin Mooncake With Custard Filling
Quite possibly the most popular non-bake mooncake, snow skin mooncakes get their smooth texture and distinct fragrance from cooked glutinous rice flour. The ingredients also give the skin a chewy and soft bite. Snow skin mooncakes come with embossed motifs like traditional ones, but mostly in pleasing pastel colours.
Resembling a colour wheel, there are countless possibilities of snow skin mooncake variations. It’s all a matter of how you choose to make the mooncake. Any natural or synthetic flavourings can be added to the mixture. Otherwise, go with the flour’s natural off-white shade as depicted in this snow skin mooncake recipe.
Recipe Ingredients:
Skin:
- 45g glutinous rice flour
- 35g rice flour
- 20g wheat starch
- 40g sugar
- 185g milk
- 18g vegetable oil
Filling:
- 1.5 tbsp custard powder
- ½ cup wheat starch
- 2 tbsp cake flour
- 100ml milk
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- ½ cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs
Mung Bean Mooncake
Mung beans are delicious legumes known for their health benefits, and this mooncake recipe uses a whole bunch of them as the base. After soaking the mung beans overnight, you’ll need to cook them to create a thick paste, which is then mixed with butter, salt, sugar, and honey for flavour. The rest of the recipe is easy. Pour the paste into a mooncake presser and firmly press down on a chopping board for the mooncakes to release.
Recipe Ingredients:
- 200g mung beans
- 300g water
- 56g unsalted butter
- 100g sugar
- 63g honey
- ¼ tsp salt
How To Gift Mooncakes To Friends And Family
Now that you know how to make mooncakes, the next thing you need is a presentable box if you plan to gift some to your loved ones! There are a few ways to go about this. You can choose a rustic pull-out drawer that has a surprise element to it, or ones with separate compartments for a neat and Instagram-ready aesthetic.
As a final touch, put it all together in a sturdy gift bag. And you don’t have to go with the usual brown renditions either. There is a myriad of colours, designs, materials, and handle types to choose from. Just pick one that suits your gift and the receiver best!
This Mid-Autumn Festival, Follow These Recipes On How To Make Mooncakes
We hope you’re excited about the Mid-Autumn Festival this year! It might be a smaller affair this time due to the pandemic, but it’s still a celebration worth having nonetheless—since you now know how to make mooncakes and snow skin mooncakes from the recipes above! Prefer to buy ready-made options?Check out our curated list of the best mooncakes in Malaysia. And if you have little ones, get them hands-on with these fun lantern tutorials.
