Snow Skin Mooncake | Hello Sakura

Snow skin mooncake (a video recipe) for traditional Chinese Mid-autumn day. This time, we are enjoying creamy custard filling.
Mooncakes are the most popular symbolized festival food for our Mid-autumn day. There are a large group of mooncakes to choose in recent years. Snow skin mooncake is a new family member compared to traditional cantonese mooncakes.

I am quite excited but also a little bit blue, as we will celebrate our Mid-autumn day in following two weeks. For me, mid-autumn day is the most important holiday along with the year because it is my birthday. Most people of my generation in China celebrate birthday based on our lunar calendar. When I was still a young girl, my grandma always cooked yummy dishes, make mooncakes and Sichuan glutinous rice cake to celebrate my birthday. To me, the new city of Shenzhen is familiar but also strange. I do not have any relatives here. The emotion of missing my mom, dad and grand parents is becoming stronger and stronger. And my way to help me out is to make yummy food and share with others. So I make a large box of snow skin mooncake for my husband’s colleagues. If you prefer a colored version, check this post: snow skin mooncakes.

I use creamy custard filling for this year’s snow skin mooncake, as I just can’t reject the milky and creamy taste. And I have also posted a famous Dim Sum creamy custard bun previously using the same filling.

To make the snow skin mooncake with the best results, I highly recommend measuring all the ingredients. And there are several tips before you starting making your own.

To make the perfect custard filling, custard powder is necessary. It is firstly imported by some bakery stores in Hong Kong and now becomes a popular baking ingredient in Mainland China too. It increases the milky aroma and adds a light yellow color to the filling. However if it really too difficult to acquire, you can skip it with some sacrifice of the taste. And if you plan to skip custard powder, using more egg yolks can help to improve the color.
During the whole processing, stir the liquid forcefully and keep the fire as slow as possible, otherwise the flour might be caking. After heating, continue to stir the filling for several minutes just like the video until the texture becomes very very fine and smooth
Kneading the wrapper dough is another important tip. This will help to keep the wrapper soft after refrigeration. And usually the wrapper will be slightly sticky even after refrigeration; you can coat your hands with pan-fried glutinous rice flour or ware a kitchen plastic glove.
In is important to coat the mooncake stamp each time before shaping, otherwise the mooncake might stick to the stamp.
Helpful ingredient links from Amazon for the appearance reference: water milled glutinous rice flour, water milled rice flour, wheat starch, mooncake stamp. You can try to search them in large local asian stores.

Ingredients

⅓ cup of glutinous rice flour for coating

Creamy custard filling

1 and ½ tablespoons custard powder
½ cup wheat starch+2 tablespoons cake flour
100ml milk
2 tablespoons unsalted butter (30grams)
½ cup granulated sugar (60 grams)
2 eggs (100g) or 1 large egg+ another yolk (whisked)

wrapper

45g glutinous rice flour
35g rice flour (water milled version)
20g wheat starch
40g sugar or sugar powder
185g milk or unsweetened coconut milk
18g vegetable oil

Instructions

Make creamy custard filling

In a small pot over slowest heat, dissolve sugar with milk.
Shift all the flours and custard powder quickly. Stir to combine well. Add egg and butter in. Keep stirring forcefully in the whole process to combine everything and avoid caking. Heat until the mixture becomes very thick and form a paste texture. Remove from fire and keep stirring for several minutes until it becomes fine and smooth.
Transfer out, cool down and cover with plastic wrapper. Refrigerate for several hours until hardened so you can shape the filling easily.

Make the wrapper

Combine milk, sugar and oil well and then mix with wheat starch, rice flour and glutinous rice flour.
Strain once and set aside for 30 minutes. Cover with plastic wrappers and steam over high fire for around 30 minutes until it becomes slightly transparent. Transfer out and stir with chop stickers forcefully for several minutes until fine and smooth. Transfer to a plate and cover with plastic wrapper. Knead with both hands for several minutes until the surface becomes oily. (This is really important to have a soft taste wrapper, so do not skip this). Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before assembling the snow skin mooncake.

Make coating flour

In a fry pan, stir fry raw glutinous rice flour on medium low heat until the flour turns light yellow. Remove it from the heat. Set aside to cool down.

Assemble

Measure each wrapper around 20grams and filling 30 grams. And then shape both of wrapper and filling to balls.
Prepare the dusting flour, filling, wrapper and mooncake stamp. Assemble the mooncake stamp well and then dust with flour. Shake off extra flour and set aside.
Wrap the filling with wrapper and seal completely. And then shape to a ball firstly and further to an oval. Place the oval to stamp (unsealed side first), flat with bottom with fingers; push the shaping tool to stamp the flowers. Then demold carefully. If you find the mooncake is sticky on the stamp, use the other hand to help separating.

Notes

Those snow skin mooncakes need to be stored in airtight wrapper or container separately; otherwise, the surface will dry out. The best enjoying time is the next day after assembling.

If you want to frozen them, they can be frozen up to 1 week but move to refrigerating area several hours before serving until they are soft back.

http://www.chinasichuanfood.com/snow-skin-mooncake-video-recipe-with-custard-filling/