Snow Skin Mooncake

Growing up, this time of the year (but usually, in September) was usually referred to as Mooncake Festival among my siblings. Not quite having the privilege of all four seasons in Manila, Philippines, my family did not stick too close to the traditions of a Mid-Autumn celebration. What we did have was a plenitude of mooncakes sent over from HK every year. I hated those things and remembered enjoying a novelty one particular year --- Snow Skin Mooncakes! The name itself glows with fanciful pleasures. Now, that was truly a long time ago and I hardly remember anything about them except that they were the first mooncakes I have ever enjoyed.

My partner, in the meantime, was feeling like a little orphaned puppy for being isolated from his family in Ecuador, with whom he had spent many, many mid-autumn nights ‘staying home, eating mooncakes and fruits, and staring up the full, round moon’. (sound of howling wolves here) At his whiny behest for a repeat of the snow skin mooncakes I made a month ago (filled with white chocolate ganache) on Mid-Autumn Festival, which is today, (‘but this time with a fruity filling’), I came up with three flavors (originally four, but since I did not have enough containers to make the peach mousse, I settled for three).

The ones I made are filled with summer berry mousse, berry and peach cheesecake, and cookies n’ cream. Mooncake molds (which I’d probably use just this once), being the same price as roughly 1.1 month’s worth of gym fees, were dispensed with. I settled for a little cup that has shallow grooves running down the sides. I am writing all this to justify the plainness of my mooncakes.

I experimented with recipes for the snow skin found in blogs by Yochana and She Bakes, She Cooks. I managed to come up with more than decent ones, but The Partner found the texture too grainy. With a few tweaks, I did come out with a softer, smoother dough. The secret is in the quantity of cooked water and starch solution, I suppose. Anyway, give this a try, you will find that it is not a daunting task at all.

You can fill it with almost anything you like. Jalea de ube with Macapuno or Yema balls (a la egg yolks) would have been nice, too.

You will need lots of bowls / containers and at least overnight for the filling and skin to set properly.

Snow Skin

2 c. Glutinous rice flour
½ c. Rice flour
½ c. Cake flour
1 c. Full cream milk
½ c. Water
3 T. Wheat starch
1 T. Vegetable oil

Transfer the glutinous rice flour, rice flour, and cake flour to a shallow dish and bake in 180C for 30 min. Cool completely. Reserve 1/3 c. of flour.

Mix the milk, water, and wheat starch in a bowl until the starch is completely dissolved. Microwave this on high for 30 SECONDS (not minutes). Stir until smooth. Microwave for another 30 seconds. Add the oil, stir until completely smooth, and set aside to cool completely.

When both mixtures are cool, mix the starch mixture into the flours gradually (not all at once). Knead with your hands until you come up with a pliable dough, that is about 3 steps away from being squishy and wet. You may have excess starch solution that you can store in the fridge for immediate future use. Do not force the flours to take in more moisture than what is right. You should have a very malleable play dough softness; any harder, then you should add more starch mix, any softer then you’d be in trouble if you didn’t have any more flour on hand. Next, wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge overnight.



Filling:

Basic Cheesecake:

250 g. Cream cheese
1 c. Whipping cream
½ c. Sugar
2 t. Lemon juice
2 t. Vanilla
1 T. gelatin dissolved in ¼ c. boiling water (I intentionally added more gelatin powder to harden the filling. You can use less for a proper cheesecake.)

Mix everything but the gelatin solution with a mixer until light and fluffy. While the mixer is running, pour the gelatin solution in a thin stream. Continue beating until all the ingredients have been incorporated properly. Chill the mixture overnight.

Summer Berry Mousse

2 c. Mixed berries (or you can opt for just one kind, washed and drained properly)
½ c. Water
2 t. Gelatin
1 c. Sugar
1 T. Lemon juice
1 c. Cream
1 c. Egg whites

Puree the berries and put into a saucepan with the water, gelatin, sugar, and lemon juice. Cook over low heat until the consistency of syrup has been achieved. (At this point, you may opt to reserve a couple of tablespoons of this mixture for the cheesecake. Just do it. I will explain later.) Cool and chill. When it’s good and cold, beat the egg whites with an electric mixer until stiff peaks form. Add the cream to the berries and mix with an electric mixer until it is thick and creamy. Gently, fold the beaten egg whites into the berry-cream mix. Chill overnight. (This is also good as a dessert poured into glasses with sponge fingers in them.)

To Assemble

The reserved tablespoons of berry-gelatin mix without the cream and egg whites, sliced into small pieces
Peaches (balled with a melon baller like faux egg yolks) or cubed (any other fruit may substitute), chill uncovered to dry them out a bit

Oreos, some crushed, some cut into chunks, mixed with 2 T. milk to soften slightly

1. Fruit cheesecake - Roll out the skin and spoon some basic cheesecake into it. Add a couple of peach balls and a small spoonful of the berry-gelatin (sans cream and egg whites) mix. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.
2. Cookies n’ cream - Mix some of the basic cheesecake mixture with the crushed oreos. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.
3. Summer berry mousse. Bundle the mousse into the skin. You may add fruits. Wrap, mold, and chill overnight.

Wrapping Technique



Please refer to the montage on right for the proper wrapping and sealing technique. I came up with it after being left feeling disappointed by the thick undersides of the mooncakes with the traditional wrapping (or system-less manner of wrapping) technique. Short of using precisely measured shapes for the skin and pre-molding the filling, I found this gives the thinnest possible skin all throughout the cake.

Roll out about a third of a cup of dough into an oval (not round). Lay the skin on your palm, which you should cup slightly. Arrange the filling so it is distributed fairly evenly on the oval center of the oval skin. Do not mound it into a round shape in the very middle of the skin. Now, fold the lengths of the skin towards the center of the filling. The edges of the skin should touch, so do not overfill. Next, bring the widths of the oval towards the center. Starting on the outer edges, start crimping the skin inward until you have fitted the skin precisely to the filling. Cut away the excess skin (crimped edges).

This is a process of elimination. You start with a large piece of skin to make wrapping easier and work your way to a smaller (precisely fitted) pouch, while pushing and cupping the filling into a round shape as you crimp. Trim the excess skin. Roll the pouch in the reserved flour and pat into your mold. Press it gently, so that it doesn’t burst, but press it firmly enough so that the patterns would show up distinctly on the skin. Turn out. Chill overnight. If you have been careful in achieving a soft pliable dough, then you shouldn’t have too many problems about the skin tearing while you wrap with them; but if you do get little tears and holes, do not worry, just patch them up with little bits of dough.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Or Happy Mooncake Festival!