Matcha Pine Nuts Snow Skin Mooncake

Hey boys and girls, it's that time of the year again, one of my fave festivals, the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節!  With a full autumn moon hung in the velvet night, all and sundry don their best traditional attire and celebrate the festival with handheld glowing lanterns , spending the night moon gazing and eating delicious mooncakes!

After having such fun making (and eating!) Dubai Chocolate Mooncakes last year, we decided to again make mooncakes with non-traditional fillings.  Our Matcha Pine Nuts Snow Skin Mooncake are sooo luscious: creamily sweet with the distinct hint of the grassy umami of matcha matched perfectly to the buttery nuttiness of the pine nut, all wrapped in a delicately sweet and tender 'snow' skin.  I was super pleased with this flavor pairing!

Matcha Pastry Filling 抹茶餡

Look at this green!  This is another one of the Five Flavors of Filling that we made for our zongzi 粽子 this year.  The gorgeous green comes from matcha 抹茶, the finely ground powder of green tea, used in Japan traditionally as a part of the tea ceremony.  It is also, most delightfully, used in baked goods and candies, the fact of which we exploit today by making this Matcha Pastry Filling 抹茶餡, a creamy, luscious, gorgeously green pastry filling with a unique grassy, sweet yet slightly bitter umami flavor that is out of this world!