Oh chocolate, oh chocolate, how much do I love thee, let me count the ways...
So many ways amirite, fellow chocolate lovers?! I love chocolate in everything, be it sweet or savory. Nom, nom...can never get enough of that dark chocolately goodness... So it was that this year for Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 I decided that we needed some chocolate to celebrate the moon!
Thus was the birth of a new styled mooncake, a Chocolate Lava Mooncake 巧克力流心月餅, a concoction of moist chocolate flavored filling with a secret heart of molten chocolate ganache, all wrapped in a tender golden skin. Wasn't too sure how it would turn out, with the lava center and all, but OMgosh it was fantastic. We were tickled pink with this chocolatey mooncake! And the center, it was all melty! Yeah chocolate chocolate!!
For the chocolate ganache that is going to be the 'lava' center of the mooncake you can use milk chocolate or dark chocolate, it's up to your personal chocolatey desire. Note that if you're using dark chocolate, don't go over 50% cocoa cuz that will affect the meltiness of the lava.
Chocolate ganache is easy to make. Just finely chop the chocolate up while heating cream until just simmering. Pour the hot cream over the chocolate, wait a bit and then mix until melted, smooth and sexy. Ta-da, chocolate ganache!
Ohh, look at my chocolate ganache!! ❤️❤️ So scrummy that it's hard not to eat most of it while you're making it. And if you have leftover ganache you can make chocolate truffles!!!
Because of the small amount of ganache we're making all the chocolate might not melt before the cream mixture cools down. If so just set up a double boiler (large heatproof bowl set over a pan of just simmering water, the pan should not touch the water) and use that gentle heat to melt the rest of the chocolate.
Make the ganache first as it needs to firm up in the fridge, get weighed and shaped into balls and then placed in the freezer to extra firm up. This will make it easier to wrap it inside the filling.
Note: As you can see from the photos, my lava center didn't ooze that much (didn't want it too spill out), though it was totally melty and creamy. In the recipe I've adjusted the cream/chocolate ratio so that the center should ooze more.
The next thing to make is the mooncake wrapping skin dough. This skin is unusual in that no water is used, only golden syrup, an invert sugar, and oil. Oh, and plus a wee bit of lye water which is the secret to lovely deep golden brown skin.
All is mixed with flour until a non sticky golden dough is formed.
The last component to make is the chocolate filling. We start with the amazing white bean paste 白豆沙 which we have posted about before. This white bean paste will make a smooth lovely paste that is mild enough in its own flavor to take on introduced flavors super well.
Check out the mango and dragon fruit flavored mooncakes we made last year with white bean paste! Yumm...
To make the chocolate mooncake filling we just added cocoa powder to the white bean paste and mixed until combined. Cocoa powder lends a deep chocolaty-ness to desserts that I love. Have you ever tried making brownies with cocoa powder, omg so good!
Our final result? A deeply chocolatey, smooth, just perfect chocolate filling for a mooncake!
 |
| Mooncake skin dough, chocolate filling, chocolate ganache 'lava' center |
With all our mooncake components made we can start the wrapping of the mooncake. The chocolate ganache is weighed, rolled to balls and firming up in the freezer already. Weigh out the mooncake skin dough and the chocolate filling into portions and roll to balls.
A note on the weights indicated in the recipe below for the 3 mooncake components. These weights are adjusted through trial and error so that the final wrapped cake can fit exactly into the mooncake mold that I have. You most likely have a different size mold, so you would have to do a similar trial and error for your first couple of mooncakes to get the correct weights for each component so that the end result fits to your particular mold.
Flatten out one of the chocolate filling balls and then place a chocolate ganache heart, now nice and frozen, in the middle. Wrap the chocolate filling up and around the ganache.
Roll the mooncake skin dough out, nice and thin. Look at that golden color!
The filling is placed on the rolled out mooncake skin dough. The wrapping commences!
Here we introduce our mooncake wrapping cheat, which we've spoken of many times before. This method evolved from frustration at our very early attempts at wrapping where we ended up with thick and uneven skins. Ugh...nothing worse than to see an mooncake looking kinda ugly once you bite into it.
With our amazing mooncake wrapping cheat you'll be able to achieve thin and mostly even mooncake skin all the way around your mooncake! It starts with folding the skin up around the filling in folds as per the above photo.
Next you'll need a trusty pair of scissors to cut off the extra bits of dough that are not needed. Be careful here, though, to not cut off too much. For more detail please see our post on How to Wrap a Mooncake. All details and tips there!
To the mold! First flour the mold lightly with flour. Use an old toothbrush, works wonderfully. Then flour your mooncake as well. Don't forget to flour, otherwise you'll end up having to dig your cake out of the mold!
Drop the mooncake in with the smoothest skin side downward. Press the cake firmly into the mold to make sure that the imprint of the pattern stands out clearly. If your weight calculations are correct your mooncake should fill the mooncake mold exactly to the top.
To release the mooncake a couple of sharp raps of the mold on the table should get the mooncake to start sliding out. Do keep an eye on the mooncake though. I've accidentally smashed my share of mooncakes through not noticing that they had dropped already and then smooshing them with another sharp rap. Oopsie!
I love this part the best! The pleasure of seeing the pretty molded mooncakes lined up in the baking pan is sublime!
These mooncakes don't need to bake for long. The baking is mostly to bake the skin to a golden brown. You will need to take out the mooncake after an initial bake and brush an egg yolk wash over them. This egg yolk wash will give the mooncake the most lovely golden gleam. Do be careful though and don't let the wash pool in the crevices of the pattern as this would blur the pattern.
After the egg wash, it's another quickie in the oven and your lovely chocolately mooncakes are out of there. Golden, gleaming brown with those wonderful traditional patterns stamped on top, you're gonna be tempted to eat one right away. But no, you're gonna have to wait, the mooncakes are not ready yet!
 |
| Bunny lanterns at the park light up the night |
The last stage of mooncake making is called 上油 or "up with the oil" where the mooncake skin, now dry and a bit hard, soaks in the moisture from the filling and becomes soft and luscious. Please don't despair, it's just a few days in an air tight container at room temp.
And finally, finally it's time to bite into your luscious Chocolate Lava Mooncake. Soft and slightly oily and oh so fragrant, smelling like mooncake and chocolate at the same time. A bite into that golden skin and the molten chocolate oozes out, creamy and sublime against the smooth chocolate filling. Gorgeously chocolately and moony, what is not to love, amirite?
On a personal note our chocolate lava mooncakes were so yummilicious that my little girl is threatening to switch her allegiance from traditional style mooncakes to this crazy new style mooncake. Which is bad. But good. Why not like both at the same time? ;)
Chocolate Lava Mooncake
Tools:
巧克力流心月餅
(24 mini mooncakes) Prep:15 mins Wrap time: 20 mins Cook time: 15 mins
Ingredients:
- small mooncake mold
- food scale
Chocolate ganache center:
- 4 oz chocolate, 113g
- 6 tbsp whipping cream
Filling
- 15.5oz white bean paste, 440g (check out our homemade white bean paste recipe)
- 4 tbsp cocoa powder, 30g
Mooncake skin
- 2 cups all purpose flour, 250g
- 6oz golden syrup, 170g (see our recipe for homemade golden syrup, scroll to bottom)
- 3.5 tbsp lard (or peanut oil), 50g
- 1 tsp lye water 鹼水
- 1 egg yolk
- 1 tsp water
Directions:
Prepare the chocolate ganache: Finely chop the chocolate. Place into a medium sized bowl. Heat the cream in a small pot over low heat until just simmering. Remove from heat, pour over the chocolate and let sit for 2 minutes. Stir until chocolate is all melted and the mixture is smooth and glossy. Let cool to room temp and then chill in the fridge until set.
Weigh out ganache into 24 portions at 0.18oz/5g each and roll into balls. Set balls onto a tray and place in the freezer while making the filling and skin.
Prepare the filling: Make the white bean paste according to the recipe here. Add the cocoa powder in and stir until evenly distributed. Weigh the chocolate flavored white bean paste into 24 portions at 0.7oz/20g each and roll into balls. Cover and chill in fridge while making the mooncake skin.
Prepare the mooncake skin: Add flour, golden syrup, lard and lye water into a mixing bowl and mix until an oily, smooth, non sticky dough is formed. If too dry add a bit more lard or oil. If too wet add more flour, one tbsp at a time. Weigh out the dough into 24 portions at 0.63oz/18g each and roll into balls.
Preheat: Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C).
Wrap the mooncake: Take one chocolate filling ball and press to form a 1 1/2 inch circle. Place one chocolate ganache ball in center. Wrap the chocolate filling up and around the ganache until a ball is formed. Repeat until all filling balls with ganache centers are made. Cover and place in fridge.
Lightly flour a working surface. Take one mooncake skin dough ball and roll out to a 4 inch circle. Place one filling ball centered on the skin. Gather the dough up and around the filling, creating folds where there is extra skin. Use scissors to cut off the extra skin. Pinch the cut edges closed. If there are bits of the filling not covered just use a bit of the cut off skin to patch. This dough patches really well.
For more details of this method please see our How to Wrap a Mooncake post for tips and cheats on the perfect mooncake wrapping method.
Place the now wrapped mooncake into your palm and very gently squeeze, turn, squeeze, etc. until a nice round ball shape is formed. Dust generously with flour all around.
Press mooncake mold: Lightly flour the mold. (Use an old toothbrush.) Drop wrapped and floured mooncake into mold. Try to drop the side with more thickness of wrapper facing up. Press firmly but gently so that the mooncake completely fills the mold. Turn mold upside down and rap the end once or twice while holding a hand below to catch the mooncake as it falls out. Repeat for all the mooncakes.
Place molded mooncakes onto a parchment paper lined baking sheet with an inch in between cakes. Use a pastry brush to brush off any excess flour.
Bake the mooncake: Bake for 10 mins. While baking prepare the egg wash by mixing the egg yolk with 1 tsp water. Remove mooncakes from oven at 10 min mark and brush egg wash over the tops and sides. Make sure that the egg wash doesn't puddle in the patterns on top, as that would blur the pattern quite a bit. Place back into the oven to bake another 5-10 mins (depends on mooncake size) or until the mooncakes are a golden yellow brown on top.
Let cool completely before putting into an airtight container for 2 days for a '上油 rest phase', that will soften the mooncake skin. After the resting phase your chocolate-licious mooncakes are ready to eat. Enjoy and happy moon gazing to all!
Storage: Keep in a covered container in the fridge for up to a week.
Mad Mooncakery at The Hong Kong Cookery:
0 comments:
Post a Comment