This is my second moon cake for the year and also one that I did not expect would work out so well. It is a wonder how you can just get ideas from what is left from your pantry when you try to come up with recipes. Blueberries has been dirt cheap for weeks here in Melbourne and my fridge has been stocked up with punnets of them and need I say more?
This mooncake is great when served cold, so when you have prepared them, give them a little chill in the fridge before serving, the kids will love it, and in my case, my husband loved it! :)
Wheat Starch is the key ingredients when making Snow Skin Mooncake
All snow skin mooncake dough calls for wheat starch in the recipe. The reason to that is that when wheat starch are heated, they turn to a translucent dough, which is what makes the snow skin mooncake looks so delicate and pretty!
So what is a wheat starch, you ask? Wheat starch is a starch derived from wheat grain. Although the starch comes from a wheat grain (grains that usually contains gluten forming protein), they are actually processed in a way that removes the gluten part in the starch. This means that wheat starch is actually gluten free! Note that although the processing of wheat starch removes gluten, there is almost never a guarantee that they are a 100% removed and may still contain some traces of gluten. So, if you have high intolerance to gluten, I wouldn't suggest you take this risk. Unfortunately, there isn't any close substitute to wheat starch but you can use corn starch or potato starch instead. However, these substitutes this will mean that your mooncake will not have the same visual and consistency. I personally have not used these substitutes myself, so I am unable to illustrate the difference on opting out on wheat starch in the recipe.
Mooncake Mould
Before you start with the preparation for this mooncake, there is one essential tool that you are going to need: Mooncake mould. There are a few different types of mooncake moulds out there and the most common and modern ones are the ones that has a self release trigger. A more traditional mooncake moulds are made out of wood, which is also great to use. All these moulds can easily be found on eBay or amazon, which is where I got most of my mould. The below picture if the ones I will be using in this post.
Functions of Rice flour in the dough
Snow skin mooncake doughs usually require that you use 3 different types of flours and they are: glutinous rice flour, rice flour and wheat starch. Glutinous rice flour is undoubtedly needed for that gooey texture in your snow skin and wheat starch as mentioned earlier is to create a translucent looking dough. The third flour, Rice flour, functions to hold everything together combining all the other flours and liquid making the cooked dough easier to work with. Without rice flour, the dough can become really soft and sticky and almost impossible to mould without it losing its shape due to its softness.
Dusting Wheat Starch Flour need to be dry heated
You wouldn't eat raw flour would you? If you are not a fan of raw flour, it is recommended that you always dry heat the dusting flour first to get rid of any nasties. The method is really simple, just place a few tablespoon or the amount of flour you think you will need for dusting the moon cake over a wide fry pan. Stir the flour in the pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until the wheat starch starts to look like it wants to clump together. Other alternatives for dusting flour are glutinous rice flour or corn flour, which needs to be dry heated as well.
You can dry heat the flour in the oven as well. Simply turn the oven on at 100C for 20 minutes then turn off the oven and spread the flour out on a baking tray and leave them in there for 20 minutes. Make sure you do not put the flour in the oven with the fan on or there will be a lot of cleaning up to do.
RECIPE
Yield: 13 - 15 Medium Size Mooncakes
Mooncake dough
100 g Icing sugar
60 g Wheat starch
100g Glutinous rice flour
100g Rice flour
460g Milk
60g Sweetened condensed milk
60g Vegetable Oil
* Reserve 200g of the plain dough to make the violet dough.
qs. Violet gel food colouring
Blueberry Cheesecake Filling
100 g Thickened cream 35% Fat
250 g Philadelphia Cream Cheese
45 g Caster Sugar
1 tsp Lemon Juice
1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste
100 g Small Blueberries
Method
For the Blueberry Cheese Cake Fillings
Place the cream cheese, lemon juice, vanilla and sugar into a stand mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix until they are well incorporated and the sugar has dissolved. Ensure that there are no lumps of cream cheese in the mix, scrape the bowl down whenever necessary.
Transfer the cream cheese filling on a mixing bowl, place the thickened cream into the mixer bowl attached with a whisk and whisk until it has slightly thickened or semi whipped but not too overly whipped.
Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese fillings. Fold in the blueberries until they are well distributed.
With a medium size ice cream scoop, scoop out individual ball of fillings of approximately 30 g each then release them onto a plate lined with parchment paper or cling wrap. Cover the top of the individual cream cheese fillings with a cling film and place in the fridge to firm up slightly.
You can prepare the blueberry cream cheese fillings a day ahead.
For the Snow Skin
Whisk all the ingredients together to combine then add in the milk gradually while continuously whisking and lastly add in the condense milk followed by the oil. The mixture should be quite liquid at this point and the oil may seem to float at the top. Do not worry too much about that at this point as we will mix and knead the dough later on.
Cover the bowl with a cling film then poke a few holes on the cling film to allow steam to escape. Place the bowl over a rack in a pot of simmering water. Cover with a lid leaving a small gap open and let the snow skin steam for approximately 30-40 minutes or until there are no longer any liquid in the mixture. Refill the steaming water if necessary to prevent it from drying out.
Note: There may be a small puddle of snow skin mix in the centre that is not the oil during steaming. If your bowl is too deep, the centre may not be able to cook evenly like the rest of the snow skin dough. To prevent over cooking the snow skin, simply use a spatula and mix the centre dough through to combine. The hot dough on the sides will gently heat and cook the uncooked dough in the centre. Over cooked snow skin can turn hard more quickly, so you want to avoid that.
After mixing the dough, it should feel sticky with a puddle of oil separated from the dough. This is normal.
Once the Snow skin is ready. Remove the bowl from the steam pot. With the help of a spatula or knife, cut the gelled snow skin to chunks and scrape the dough off the bowl while it is still hot. Do not leave it to cool to do this or the dough will get stuck to the bowl and be difficult to get out. Once you have scrape and cut the dough to chunks, leave to cool in the same bowl until you are able to handle them for kneading. There will be some oil separated from the dough at this point, don't worry about this at this stage as we will be kneading them back into the dough once it is cool enough to handle.
Once the snow skin is cool to touch, with a gloved hands, massage the dough to incorporate the oil back into the dough and continue to knead until it forms to a smooth and pliable dough. Wrap with cling wrap and leave to completely cool in the fridge until you are ready for assembly.
Divide the dough to 13 x 50 g portions.
Assembly
Divide the dough to 13 x 50 g portions then roll them to a smooth ball. With the excess dough, place a small amount of violet colour into the dough and knead until they are well combined. If the dough starts to get soft, lightly roll the dough in some dusting flour and set aside.
Divide the violet dough to approximately 13 g, lightly dust with some dusting flour then press it lightly onto the flat stamp base of the mould. Attach the stamp onto the dispensable mooncake mould. Do not dust too much dusting flour otherwise the top will have too much excess flour. You do need to dust with some flour though as this will ensure that the dough to not get stuck on the stamp.
Press the portioned white dough flat between your palm and wide enough to wrap the cream cheese fillings. Place the filling in the centre and cup the dough around the filling to wrap it around. Do not dust it with any dusting flour if you can.
Pinch the seams to seal. Lightly brush some water on top the violet dough then gently press the mooncake into the mould on top of the violet dough with the seam side facing outwards. Tilt the dispensing mould over to a flat surface then press the trigger of the mould gently to create the mooncake shape then release the trigger. Release the mould from the moon cake gently.
