The deliciously tender and chewy semi translucent skin of this no bake mooncake is made from a few types of flour. Glutinous rice flour helps to create the chewy and stretchy texture. Rice flour is added to stiffen the skin enough to hold the molded shape. And finally wheat starch is added to help the skin look a bit translucent, enhancing the 'snow' look of the skin.
Being super mooncake fans, we have, over the years, a tried a few different recipes for snow skin (see here and here). This new recipe for snow skin dough was the really tasty (I kept sneaking bits!) and most importantly made skin that held the best detail from the mold. So this the one!
To make the snow skin we first separately mix the dry and the wet. The rice flour, glutinous rice flour and wheat starch in one bowl. Stir, stir, stir. The milk, powdered sugar and oil in another bowl. Stir, stir, stir...
Then the dry and the wet are mixed together. Stir, stir, stir some more!
The flours are rather starchy and will have a tendency to stick together in an oozy sort of way. So a wee bit of care is needed to make sure the flour and liquid are mixed properly before steaming.
Use a sieve to pass the mixture thru a few times until the flours are all mixed in thoroughly. Once mixed the mixture is allowed to rest, the flours/starch absorbing the water even more.
The dough mixture is steamed over high heat. To prevent water from dripping back out the mixture as it steams, either use a bamboo steamer or top with a cheesecloth (as per photo above) to catch the any condensation.
Note: I love this cloth! I use it for everything, making yogurt, steaming, covering food when cooling, etc.
Note: I love this cloth! I use it for everything, making yogurt, steaming, covering food when cooling, etc.
The snow skin mixture after steaming. As you can see, it has hardened into a bouncy white mass.
You must, while the mixture is hot, use a utensil to scrape the mixture to form a ball. I ended up scraping it loose from the steaming bowl first and then using the end of my rolling pin to pound the mixture loose before forming a ball. The mixture will be quite oily, this is correct.
Let the mixture cool. Once cool, it's ready weigh out and use to wrap your snow skin mooncakes.
Now, onto the fabulous filling! Recently we made many new fillings for zong zi for Dragon Boat Day that we were super happy with. For our mooncake we decided to use one of our favorite of the new flavors, the Matcha Filling: a creamy, coconut-y, custardy flavored filling touched with the delicately fragrant, slightly bitter taste of matcha powder. So yummy and so pretty a green!
To this we added a ton of pine nuts. It turns out that matcha and pine nuts go together like the sky and the sea, a perfecto food match! Plus I just love, love, love pine nuts!
Here's the final filling. Green tea matcha flavored filling dotted throughout with buttery nutty pine nuts. Omgosh so scrummy!
With the snow skin dough and the filling prepared, it's time to start prepping for the actual mooncake making. The dough and the filling are both weighed out in precise weights and rolled into balls. For the matcha filling you will need to freeze the filling for a while until it's hard enough to roll.
Note that different mooncake molds hold different volumes of filling/dough. So you will usually need to experiment with the first mooncake to figure out the correct weights of the filling/dough that will fill up your particular mold. Once you've established the correct weights needed to fill up your mold you can weigh out all the rest of the filling/dough to those weights.
Take one dough round and roll it out. Place one filling ball on top. Close up the ball by wrapping the snow skin up around the filling.
The wrapped mooncake is gently rolled in between the palms into a ball. The final ball is dropped into a plate of cornstarch and rolled around. This layer of starch coats the sticky snow skin, making it possible to be pressed into a mold without sticking to it.
As our mold was in the lovely shape of the Chinese bottle gourd, also known as the húlu 葫蘆, we made our shape into more of a oval so as to fit into our specific mold. This is our first use of a modern type of mooncake mold, so it was fun to try it!
This mold, interestingly, also had a separate plastic piece that could be inserted into the mold (after the mooncake ball was in) to press the cake flat (photo on left shows the plastic piece when in the mold). This was awesome because it meant that we didn't need to measure the dough/filling weights too precisely, cuz you can control the thickness of the mooncake with the extra piece.
The magic of the making! This is my absolute favorite part of making, when your mooncake pops out of the mold and you've made this beautiful thing! It still thrills me every time.
So that's our mooncake! From The Hong Kong Cookery, we wish you all happy gorgeous moon gazing and marvelous mooncake munchies for this Mid-Autumn Festival!
Matcha Pine Nuts Snow Skin Mooncake
(makes 13 mooncakes) Filling prep time: 25 mins Prep time: 10 mins Cook time: 15 mins Wrap time: 15 mins
Ingredients:
Filling
- 14 oz matcha filling, 400g (click on link for recipe)
- 1 cup pine nuts, 160g
Snow Skin Dough
- 3/4 cup milk, 186g
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar, 60g
- 4 tsp neutral flavored oil, 20g
- 4 1/2 tbsp glutinous rice flour, 46g
- 4 tbsp rice flour, 36g
- 2 tbsp + 1 tsp wheat starch, 20g
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
Directions:
Make the filling: Make the matcha filling according to the recipe here. You will need to double the recipe amount. Make the filling and then place into the freezer to harden up for about an hour or until hard enough to weigh out and roll.
Make the snow skin dough: In one bowl mix the milk, powdered sugar and oil. In another bowl stir together the glutinous rice flour, rice flour and wheat starch. Combine wet and dry in one bowl and stir to mix. Push mixture through a sieve a few times or until no more lumps. Let rest for 5 mins.
Steam the snow skin: Prepare a steamer. When the steamer water is boiling, pour the liquid dough mixture into a shallow dish, give it a final stir and place into the steamer. Steam over high heat for 15 mins. To prevent condensation on to the dough, place a thin towel between the steamer and the lid, pulling up the towel ends over the lid (to prevent the towel from burning.)
Prep the steamed snow skin: Remove from the stove and immediately use a spoon to scrap the dough mixture up from the pan. It will be bouncy and quite oily. After scraping up, use one end of a rolling pin to press the dough down until it is loose enough to press together in a ball. Let the dough cool.
Weigh out fillings/dough: Remove the filling from freezer. It should be hard enough to shape by now. Weigh filling out to 30g* portions and roll into balls. Place filling balls back in the freezer. For the dough, weigh out to 16g* portions and roll into balls.
*Note: As noted in the post above, the weights you use might need to be adjusted to fit your particular mooncake mold, so you should try out the weights first to see if they fill up your mold. The weights noted in our recipe may be too little or too much for your mooncake and you will need to adjust.
Wrap the mooncake: Take one dough ball and roll out to about 2.75 inch (7 cm) circle. (Don't use any flour/starch while rolling as you want the snow skin to be able to stick to itself as you wrap.) Place one filling ball onto dough and wrap the filling completely with the snow skin dough. Use palms to gently roll the wrapped mooncake into a ball shape. Roll the wrapped mooncake generously in corn starch. Cornstarch will prevent the mooncakes from sticking together as well as prevent the mooncake from sticking to the mold.
Press in the mold: Place wrapped and starch coated mooncake into the mooncake mold. Press it gently but firmly until it fills up the mold. To remove the mooncake from the mold, if using traditional wooden molds, you will need to tap a corner of the mold on a table to get the mooncake to slide out. If using the new plastic molds, you just need to press the plunger and your lovely mooncake will pop out.
Repeat for all: Repeat wrapping the mooncake balls and pressing it in the mold until all the fillings/dough are used up.
Serve and store: The mooncakes can be served right away. For those you want to eat later store these snow skin mooncakes in an air tight container in the freezer. To eat, let the mooncakes sit out at room temperature for 10-15 mins first. Enjoy and Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Mooncake Madness at The Hong Kong Cookery:
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