How to Wrap a Mooncake 月餅皮做法

Have you ever wondered how to get that homemade mooncake skin as thin and even as possible?  With machines it is very easy, obviously, but when hand pressing mooncakes at home it can be quite tricky.  If you're not careful you'll end up with some sides thick and some sides thin.  Uggh...not a pretty sight.  I know that there is a 'professional' hand method to make wrap mooncakes but my clumsy hands haven't really mastered it yet.  

However, as we really love making homemade, hand pressed mooncakes, we have developed a 'cheat', so to speak, our own unique easy method of wrapping the mooncake, whether for snow skin mooncakes or traditional baked mooncakes, that produces a a thin even skin on all sides of the mooncake.

Snow Skin Custard Mooncake 奶皇冰皮月餅

This lovely hand pressed cake is a very popular recent incarnation of the traditional Chinese mooncake, the Custard Mooncake 奶皇月餅, which is actually a repurposing of a traditional Cantonese dim sum favorite, the Custard Bun 奶皇包, a sweet bread bun filled with luscious soft and sweet custard filling.  

An enterprising chef at the fabulous Peninsula Hotel decided to tuck the creamy custard filling into a traditional mooncake and created the first of these 30 some years ago and since then they have become more and more popular.  (And expensive!)  

We wanted to make some custard mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節 but decided to put a twist on it and wrap the creamily delicious custard inside a delicately soft rice flavored mochi like wrapping to make Snow Skin Custard Mooncakes, or 奶皇冰皮月餅.  OMGosh...yummilicious and light as a snowflake!

Osmanthus Flower Jelly 桂花糕

Chinese Mid Autumn Festival 中秋節 is coming around the corner!  It's the time of the full harvest moon, glowing lanterns held aloft by small hands, long nights of gazing longingly at Chang-O 嫦娥, lovely ethereal goddess of the moon, and stuffing of bellies to bursting point with delectable mooncakes, perfectly round to symbolize reunion.  

Chinese Preserved Plum Caramel Lollipops 話梅棒棒糖

Oooh! I'm quite pleased with these lollipops, they'll do...  What a fun and easy thing to make at home and pass out to all the crazy lollipop lovers in your path!  But wait, first I have to warn the uninitiated, the secret of these lollipops is that they have a heart of Chinese preserved dried plums which are cheek puckeringly sour and yet sweet at the same time.  

Each of these fun and lovely to look at traditional Chinese Preserved Plum Caramel Lollipops, or 話梅棒棒糖, have a licorice flavored dried plum encased lovingly in hardened caramel, sooo good to lick and suck slowly, sweet and sour coming together in your mouth to satisfy and sooth your candy soul to yummilicious perfection.

Turkish Delight Sorbet

It's been hot, hot, hot this summer in Hong Kong and an oncoming typhoon has made the weather even more toasty roasty than before.  "I'm melting...melting..."  as the Wicked Witch of Oz did screech.  

So it seemed the thing to do to make this chillingly appropriate Turkish Delight Sorbet, a delightful, elegant and cooling bit of rose flavored sweet ice just balanced with a touch of tart lime.  Super easy to make, wonderful to look at and just the thing for the hottest days of the year!

Homemade Strawberry Mango Jam

La, de, da... this is a super fun kind of summer jam!  Strawberries and mangos are in abundant supply.  What better idea than to mix 'em up into a fabulously yummilicious mix it up jam!  I wasn't so sure that the flavors would "jam" so to speak, but wowzer, it did "jam" in the most interestingly tasty way.  Try it out yourself with our luscious double flavor packed Strawberry Mango Jam!  

Do note this is a quick recipe for making one lovely jar of jam only for consumption within a couple of weeks and not a recipe for batch making of jam!

Strawberries with Mint White Chocolate Cream

Yummmmmmmm...it's summer and time for strawberries!  There's sun in the sky and summer strawberries on the store shelves!  I usually make strawberries and freshly whipped chantilly cream (just whipped up cream with a touch of sugar and vanilla) as a special treat for my little girl but then I happened on a little twist to this dessert that makes it so much more sophisticated and yummilicious but still quite simple to make!  

It's Strawberries with Mint White Chocolate Cream!  That is, to break it apart, fragant strawberries, fresh mint, smooth white chocolate, and whipped cream!  Goshdangit...all my favorite summer tastes in one simple elegant and ohsotasty dessert!

Braised Yellow Croaker Fish and Pickled Vegetable Soup 雪菜大湯黃魚

This classic authentic Shanghai dish is simple to make but simply fabulous to eat.  We recently made it for the first time and then had to make it again and again and again.  It is so yummilicious!  

The Braised Yellow Croaker Fish and Pickled Vegetable Soup 雪菜大湯黃魚 is a meltingly tender and tasty braised fish bathed in a beautiful white fish soup with preserved vegetable, bamboo and jin hwa ham until all flavors are melded together.  Not only do you have delicious braised fish to eat,  you also get a truly delectable soup to sip on, a time saving two in one dish!

Luscious Lychee Ice Cream

I remind all our dear readers that this is the time of year for the Queen of Summer Fruits, the lovely Lychee!  We've been gorging ourselves on luscious, juicy lychees, desperate to gobble down as many as we can before they disappear until next year.  We got inspired by the abundance of lychee and the hot sweltering temperatures of the summer to make our favorite homemade summer treat, ICE CREAM!  

You've got to check out our Lychee Ice Cream, 荔枝雪糕, a soft luscious velvety ice cream packed through and through with delectable real lychee flavor and aroma.  We think it's the best ice cream we've ever made...voted our new family favorite ice cream flavor!

Sichuan Spicy Fish Stew 水煮魚

This gloriously easy and distinctive Sichuan 四川 dish has swept the world and leapt to fame in the past decade or so.  You cannot go anywhere in the world these days where Chinese food is served and not find some version of this addictive dish which features the 'mala' 麻辣 kind of spicy with fish or beef.  

'Mala' spiciness is a very unique flavor, featuring the heat of chilies married with the mouth numbing tingle of sichuan peppercorns.  Once you've tried 'mala' it's hard to forget, it's so unique.

My 老公 loves, loves, loves 'mala' spicy dishes but we seldom get to eat it as my little girl has still not gotten the hang of spicy food yet.  It's hilarious really, he gets the saddest look of longing on his face when he mentions this dish every once in a while.  

So to stop that sad face, I suggested that we make it at home as one dish of our three dish plus rice family style Chinese dinner.  Yay, finally, he can have his beloved Sichuan Spicy Fish Stew 水煮魚, a tender fish and veggies stew finished with a fiery and tongue numbing aromatic 'mala' spiced oil.  Oh. Wow. What a spectacular dish this is!!