Piggy Shanghai Mooncake, originally uploaded by pearlyn83.
papa&mama pig, originally uploaded by pearlyn83.
This is a long overdue post. I made these last week for Mid-Autumn Festival but haven’t had the time to post this. I was going to make Shanghai pancakes the traditional way in a dome shape, but came across this recipe in Cooking is My Passion blog. It looked so cute so I decided to test my creative side!
The red bean paste was made a couple of days ahead and chilled in the refrigerator. The pastry made fresh to be served as dessert on Wednesday night as we had friends over to celebrate Mid-Autumn Fesival together. We bought some commercial mooncakes a couple of weeks ago and they were packaged in nice metallic boxes. Hence I used the boxes to pack some piggy mooncakes as gifts for close friends. I had lotsa fun forming the pig shapes as it was my first time. Krystal tried her hands at making a couple and we tried making some girlie pigs (which if you look carefully can be distinguished by the ribbon near its ears).
Red Bean Paste
Ingredients:
- Red bean
- A handful of rice
- Sugar
- Dried orange peel
Method:
- Soak red bean and rice in water overnight.
- Drain and bring to boil in a pot (non-stick preferably). Add sugar and orange peel and simmer red bean over medium heat until dry.
- Add oil and fry till dry. Make sure red bean’s still a bit moist and not fully dry. If it’s too dry, when you use it as a filling and bake it, the result’s not too good.
- Leave to cool and store in refrigerator.
Shanghai Mooncake
Ingredients:
Yellow Dough:
- 1/2 cup flour
- 3 tbsp melted butter
White Dough:
- 1 cup flour
- 3 tbsp butter
- Pinch of salt
- Water, enough to form soft dough
- Egg yolk + water, to glaze
Method:
- Preheat oven to 180C. Line baking tray with baking paper.
- Mix ingredients for both dough in 2 separate bowls.
- Form white dough into a ball and roll out on a floured work area.
- Roll it out to a flat rectangular piece. Place yellow dough in the middle and fold the white dough to wrap the yellow dough.
- Roll it out then fold to overlap each other.Repeat the step for another 2 – 3 times.
- Roll dough swiss rolls style. Use a dough cutter and slice into 1 inch thick pieces. Flatten each piece with the palm of your hands or a rolling pin.
- Place a spoonful of red bean paste in the middle and wrap it up. Form into a pig shape.
- Glaze with egg yolk and bake in oven till brown.
