Snow Skin Mooncakes with Black Sesame and Strawberry

Cooking with Love

The Mid-Autumn Festival (also known as Autumn Moon Festival or Lantern Festival) is considered to be one of the most significant festivals for Chinese origins around the world. The tradition is commonly shared all over the world to worship the moon, celebrate the harvest season, and most importantly, to eat mooncake.

There are various types of mooncakes. Snow Skin Mooncake, also known as Crystal Mooncake, is a non-baked mooncake with a soft and chewy texture. It is eaten chilled, best with a cup of green tea.

Ingredients

150g glutinous rice flour
150g rice flour
100g wheat starch flour
1 tbsp icing sugar (optional)
Black sesame paste (available in Asian grocery markets)
1 punnet (250g) strawberries

Equipment

1 steamer
1 flat pan
1 mooncake mold

Method

Step 1: Making the snowy skin
In a big bowl, mix 150g glutinous rice flour, 150g rice flour and 100g wheat starch flour with 250g of water, stir gently until the mixture looks like milk, pour it through a sieve. Pour the mixture into a saucepan. Stir the flour mix over a medium heat for 40mins until the batter forms into a dough. Allow to cool enough to handle. Knead the dough into a ball. Place the dough in a bowl, cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put in the refrigerator to chill overnight. While cooking the dough, put 3 tablespoons of glutinous rice flour into a frying pan. Cook the raw flour over a medium heat for 3-5mins.

Step 2: Making the paste (filling balls)
Take out the black sesame paste (or any other flavour you’d prefer), shape the paste in to a small ping-pong sized ball – approximately 25g.
Wash the strawberries and cut in to small pieces, if you are taking the fruit option.

Step 3: Assemble the mooncake
Remove the chilled dough (mooncake skin) from the refrigerator. Roll the dough in to small ping-pong sized ball (25g), and roll it out to a thin circular wrapper. To avoid the stickiness, pinch a small amount of pan-fried cooked glutinous rice flour and dust it over the dough. Wrap the dough over the black sesame ball (or strawberry) like you would wrap a dumpling.

Step 4: Mold the mooncake
Dust the assembled ball with a thin layer of cooked glutinous rice flour. Fit the ball into the mooncake mold and press gently for 10 seconds. Release the mooncake. Sprinkle some icing sugar on top on the mooncake, if desired. Served chilled with a cup of green tea.