My 'Prototype' Mooncakes

The Mooncake Festival is around the corner and the price of mooncakes has risen again from last year. It's becoming so expensive that I would be very careful while eating it, knowing that a single crumb that drops on the floor may be worth about one Ringgit...! (ok,ok, I'm exaggerating, but it's kind of hard on the pocket)

So being a DIY kind of mom, I thought I would make my own mooncakes this year...no, not the jelly kind that I often make...but the "baked-in-the-oven lotus paste mooncakes with pumpkin seeds" kind. One of my friends (who bakes mooncakes every year) told me that it really isn't very difficult. So feeling encouraged, I looked up the recipe on the internet and bought all the ingredients.

Ok, first of all I had to melt sugar with some water to make a syrup. Not too difficult, right?

WRONG.

The sugar refused to melt to a golden colour (as stated in the recipe) even after one whole hour of boiling, by which time my feet were aching from standing so long watching the fire so that the sugar won't get burnt...so I dumped the whole pot of syrup and used bought-off-the-shelf golden syrup instead.

I mix the ingredients and make my mooncake skin dough. It turns out really, really sticky and gooey but I need to let it rest at least 3 hours, so hopefully by then it would turn into a pliable consistency.

WRONG...again.

I had to add extra flour to the dough mixture so that I could knead it and divide it into 15 equal portions without the whole piece of dough stuck to my hand like a second skin!

OK, I finally manage to wrap the dough around small round balls of lotus paste mixed with pumpkin seeds and try to stuff the first one into the mould.

Oops...over-estimated the size...the mooncake turns out into an ugly mis-shapen lump...(sounds of hubby and kids laughing in the background, and hubby whips out his camera)

This time I reduce the quantity of the lotus paste and dough, and manage to make the mooncakes look more decent.

Brushed them with some egg wash and popped them into the oven. When they're done they don't look too bad.

The taste? Not too good....the skin was quite hard and the filling was a little too dry.

I got some more tips from my friend and I suppose I will try baking mooncakes again....next year. Right now I am wondering how I am going to finish all these mooncakes since they are not good enough to be given away...