I adore this flaky spiral layer’s
mooncake the most out of all mooncake varieties. After eating, you will not
soon forget about the buttery flavour of the puff pastry skin, which melts on
your lips, and the sweet but not greasy paste filling encased in salted egg
yolk.
I grew up eating traditional
mooncakes with sweetened lotus filling. I have never heard of mooncake with a
thousand spiral layers. I have no idea how it came to be, but I think the
inspiration was from the traditional Teochew mooncake, which has a disc-like
shape and is frequently "marked" with a red stamp on top of the cake.
And this spiral thousand-layer mooncake
also makes me think of Singapore's well-known spiral curry puff, which needs to
make two different doughs to wrap the filling.
Many people adore puff pastry with a
crisp texture. Even though all you need to make puff pastry is flour, water,
butter, sugar, etc., Is it difficult to make this puff pastry mooncake? The
recipe for this pastry layer mooncake is not tough, but I found this to be a
very challenging challenge. It only requires a little focus and patience. You
will be astounded by the results, which are gorgeously flaky, and buttery, with
a glossy crisp exterior and a rich and delectable filled inside.
I made a few changes to the recipe. The
original recipe is without egg yolk, but the older ones always say the yolk is
the symbol of the mid-autumn festival. The egg yolk will help to balance the
flavour of the rich filling.
When you look up a recipe online,
you will see that some of the recipes is using butter, shortening, or lard to
make the dough. I am using Ghee instead. Ghee is extracted from milk that does
not contain water and salt. It has a strong taste and can make crispy products.
If ghee is hard to find or not available, you can use lard or unsalted butter,
except for shortening.
I have used shortening to make this pastry mooncake previously. When it is freshly baked, it is good to eat. The outside becomes tough to eat the next day and needs to be reheated in the microwave. Not everyone has a microwave or oven at home, so when friends and family mentioned that the pastry mooncake was hard to eat, I was dismayed. The next year, I switched to making the dough with ghee.
For the filling, I am making my own mango mung bean paste and custard. This mango paste is made with fresh mango flesh, no artificial flavoring is added. It is definitely more delicious than store bought. Since mango flesh is sweet, not much sugar is added. You may make this paste whenever you have excess mango flesh whenever you have excess mango flesh and freeze the paste for later use. The process of making homemade mango paste is time consuming but worth the effort. For the custard filling, you may refer to my Cantonese custard mooncake.
(Oily skin dough)
200g flour
15g icing sugar/ powdered sugar
70g ghee
100ml cold water
some colouring (green, yellow, and purple)
METHOD
1. Sieve the flour with a strainer.
2. Add the icing sugar to the ghee and mix well. (The ghee should not be kept at room temperature to the point of being too soft, otherwise, it will stick to your hands when mixing it).
3. Add the sifted flour and pour in
cold water and knead for 5 to 6 minutes to form a soft dough. Divide the dough into 2 half. One half mixed with green and yellow colouring to create a natural green colour. The other half mixed with purple colour. Let the dough rest for 40 minutes. Should
practice holding back a little of the water from the recipe, adding it
incrementally, and going by feel rather than measurement, is the preferred way
to get a perfect dough.
Note: Water need to be controlled
well at this step. If the dough is too dry, will be hard to wrap and seal the filling.
(Pastry dough)
160g flour
80g ghee
METHOD
1. Sieve the flour and the purple
potato flour with a strainer in a large bowl.
2. Add the ghee to the flour and blend
the ghee into the flour with a pastry blender or use your fingertips. The
mixture should look like coarse crumbs, slowly knead the ghee and flour with
your hands until you have a smooth dough. Do not over-knead. Wrap it in plastic
wrap and keep it in the refrigerator for later use.
INGREDIENTS
(Mooncake filling)
270g mango mung bean paste
270g custard filling
6 salted egg yolks divided into half
METHODS
1. Take out the pastry dough from
the refrigerator, divide it into 6 equal portions (40g each) and roll them into
balls.
2. Divide the prepared PURPLE oily skin
dough into 3 portions (65g each) and the GREEN dough into 3 portion (65g each) as well and shape them into balls.
1. Flatten and roll out a portion of the PURPLE oily skin dough , smooth side up, wrap in a portion of the pastry dough, fold up and pinch it tightly. Repeat until the rest are completed.
2. Press down the wrapped dough slightly, roll it into an oval-shaped sheet, smooth side down, roll it up with seal side downward. Repeat until the rest are completed, cover, and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
3. With the seal side facing up, flatten the dough with your hands. Roll the dough into a long shape gently and evenly with the rolling pin, if the dough is rolled a little longer, there will be more layers of pastry. Roll it up from the short side, repeated until the rest are completed, cover it, and rest for 20 minutes.
4. Used a sharp knife to cut the dough in half. Put the beautiful cut side faces down, flatten, and roll it out, keep the spiral pattern of dough in the centre, and wrap a piece of custard filling and seal it. Repeat until the rest are complete. You will get 6 purple pastry mooncake in total.
5. Preheat the oven to 180 and bake for 25 minutes, until the surface of the cake shows obvious lines.
ASSEMBLE FOR THE GREEN PASTRY MOONCAKE
1. Flatten and roll out a portion of the GREEN oily skin dough , smooth side up, wrap in a portion of the pastry dough, fold up and pinch it tightly. Repeat until the rest are completed.
2. Press down the wrapped dough slightly, roll it into an oval-shaped sheet, smooth side down, roll it up with seal side downward. Repeat until the rest are completed, cover, and let the dough rest for 10 minutes.
3. With the seal side facing up, flatten the dough with your hands. Roll the dough into a long shape gently and evenly with the rolling pin, if the dough is rolled a little longer, there will be more layers of pastry. Roll it up from the short side, repeated until the rest are completed, cover it, and rest for 20 minutes.
4. Used a sharp knife to cut the dough in half. Put the beautiful cut side faces down, flatten, and roll it out, keep the spiral pattern of dough in the centre, and wrap a piece of mango filling and seal it. Repeat until the rest are complete. You will get 6 green pastry mooncake in total.
5. Preheat the oven to 180 and bake for 25 minutes, until the surface of the cake shows obvious lines.
Even though it takes a bit more time and work, making this pastry mooncake is not difficult. Sometimes I even think to myself, "Wow, I can make pastry layers mooncake that looks like this." It is amazing! I will pat myself on the back. And you should pat yourself on the back as well.
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