Fruit Mooncake 水果月餅

If you've been following our little food adventures, you may recall how delighted I was with our efforts with homemade humble but versatile white bean paste and the revelation that all kinds of flavors could be very successfully infused with it.  Check out our post on Chocolate Filled Raspberry Tang Yuan for one such very successful chocolately infusion.

For Mid Autumn Festival this year we decided to experiment again, this time infusing the flavors and gorgeous colors of fruit into the white bean paste fillings for our homemade mooncakes.  Here are, if I may say so myself, the absolutely beautiful results of our efforts.  Our Homemade Fruit Mooncakes 水果月餅  are out of this world: tender golden crusts beautifully imprinted with traditional mooncake patterns wrapped snuggly about brilliantly hued fruit infused fillings.  

Chrysanthemum White Bean Paste Nerikiri Cake

This lovely chrysanthemum flower is actually an edible treat!  It’s a Japanese sweet treat known as nerikiri and is simply made with white bean paste.  We’ve previously made a super cute Easter Bunny nerikiri with white bean paste and it was super fun as well as delicious.  

We’ve made a Chrysanthemum White Bean Paste Nerikiri Cake this time in the same way, just in time for the Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節.  Chrysanthemums bloom in the fall and are traditionally used as a background to gleaming mooncakes and flowered filled osmanthus jellies that celebrate the festival.   Today the chrysanthemum leads the way as a delicate, gorgeous to look at and yummilicious to eat treat. What a revelation!

Chinese Steamed Egg with Mushroom 香菇蒸蛋

There's absolutely nothing better than a silky smooth Chinese egg custard as we've shown our dear readers how to achieve successfully in our post on Chinese steamed eggs 蒸蛋 (click the link!).  Today we'te going to talk about a twist on the classic steamed egg that had my hubby and little girl asking for seconds and thirds and finally demanding why I hadn't made more!

The twist?  We infuse the intense and fragrant flavors of dried shitake mushroom into our silky smooth egg custard.  Wow oh whoppity wow, why haven't I made this before?  Chinese Steamed Egg with Mushroom 香菇蒸蛋 is so yummilicious:  delicate slippery bites of tender egg custard with delectably flavorful chewy bites of mushroomy mushroom.  YUM!  And we'll show you how to make it to perfection!