This is my first attempt making mooncake piglets, after a break of about 2 years. The last time I made snowskin mooncakes was in 2010, before I left for my studies. I have originally intended to bake just simple piglet biscuits – those that can be commonly found in heartland bakeries, contained in the small colourful baskets. Unfortunately, Phoon Huat no longer sells the baking moulds for these piglets; which means I have no other choice but to shape these animals with my own hands plus the little bit of creativity that I have left in my greying cerebral remains.
First of all, a big thank you to Anncoo for sharing her wonderful recipe online. Below is an adapted version of her recipe, to accommodate all the salted egg yolk lovers out there.
Ingredients:
- Sugar syrup: 360g
- Alkaline water: 12g
- Peanut oil: 150g
- Hong Kong flour: 600g + extra for dusting
- White lotus paste: 1.5 kg (or any other flavoured pastes)
- Salted egg yolk: As many as you’d like to have, 1 per piglet
- Black bean: 72 pieces, washed and dried
- Egg wash: 1 egg yolk + 1 drop yellow egg colouring + 1 tbsp water
- Glaze: 1 tsp butter (melted) + 1/2 tsp honey
Method:
- Combine sugar syrup, alkaline water and peanut oil. Mix well.
- Sift flour into a mixing bowl.
- Make a hole in the center of the flour. Add in sugar syrup mixture.
- Mix everything together with a spatula to form a soft dough.
- Cover with cling wrap and leave to rest for 20 min.
- While dough is resting, measure out balls of lotus paste & egg yolk of (70g per ball).
- Wrap yolk inside paste and roll to form ball shape.
- Dust table top with some flour. Knead dough till smooth.
- Measure out 50g of dough for each piglet.
- Flatten dough and wrap a ball of paste and yolk inside it.
- Roll the whole thing to form a smooth oval-shaped ball.
- Form the eyelids of the pig by impressing the front of the dough with a small teaspoon.
- Press 1 black bean underneath each eyelid to form the eyes.
- Make an indentation with a toothpick at the bottom of the body, to form the legs.
- Do the same at the back of the body to form its butt.
- Roll out 5 small pieces of dough the size of your small fingertip.
- Press 1 piece under the eyes to form the nose. Flatten and use a toothpick to poke 2 nostrils.
- Press 2 pieces onto the top left and right of the head to form the ears. Flatten and press out the ear contours with a toothpick.
- Roll out the last piece into a tail. Press onto the top of the butt line and twist to form a curve.
- Place the pig gently onto a lined baking tray. Brush over body gently with egg wash, leaving out the eyes, nose, ears and tail.
- Bake in preheated oven at 175 degrees for 5 min.
- Leave piglets to cool for 10 min. Brush with egg wash again, including eyes, nose, ears and tail.
- Bake at 175 degrees for another 10 min.
- Glaze piglets with butter and honey. Bake for another 3 min.
- Decorate with colourful ribbons as gifts for your loved ones!
Tricks:
- Applying the glaze at the last step makes the end product even more enticing and appetising.
- Baking it first before brushing the impressed portions (ears, nose, tail) would prevent the brush from evening out these details.
- Brush over each part of the body only once. I realised that the areas which I brushed over more than once appeared browner and darker, resulting in uneven browning during the baking process.
- This exact same recipe could be used to bake the traditional mooncakes.
- For the cookie version of mooncake piglets, please refer to ‘Mooncake Piglet Cookies With Fanciful Piglet Moulds‘.
Disclaimers:
- Made a deal with HIM that I’ll be making standing pigs the next time round to commemorate all our pet pigs at home. These pigs don’t look too good currently, what with the slanted noses and drooping eyes.
- Took me almost 6 hours to complete this gargantuan task!
Serving:
Makes 36-40 piglets or 12-15 mooncakes
Goddamn, that’s a cute piggy.
Thanks! More to come : (:)D
They look simply adorable!
Oink! Oink! : (:)D
Hi Baking Mama,
So happy to see the little piglets you made – indeed a labor of love – 6 hours! I think they definitely look cuter than the mould ones. I recently saw these cute pigs on anncoo’s too and was wondering if I should try them. Could I ask you something? On Anncoo, it says that based on their portion, you can make 5 piglets. I noticed that you have increased their recipe portions by 4 times- yet instead of 20 piglets, you had 36-40 piglets… (Based on the dough weight, you used the same 50g dough) … Did you make them smaller?
Appreciate the tip.
THanks again,
Kim
Hi Kim,
Many thanks for your interest in my recipe. Happy to hear that there’s another person out there making mooncake piglet for the festival 🙂 I used Anncoo’s recipe as my base recipe, and from there, I adapted it in 2 ways:
– adding of salted egg yolk: that takes up about 20g of the paste, resulting in extra pastes
– smaller features on the pig (ears, nose, tail), resulting in extra dough
These are probably reasons why I was able to make more pigs, which I believe were just a bit smaller than Anncoo’s (about the size of a fist). You will also probably have to adapt the recipes, whichever you are using, to make your piglets in the preferable size and shape, hence the weight of the paste and dough can afford to vary between 50 – 70g.
Hi Baking mama,
Thanks for the very quick response. Really appreciate it. Just bought some mooncakes ingredients today and will try baking soon.
Thanks again,
Kim
Have fun making them. Let me know if you have other ways in which to improve this recipe as mine is not perfect yet 🙂
Wow, baking mama is gaining popularity now.
Hope that she will start posting new content soon.
Especially recipes that works for guy.
Trying to find time haha… 🙂
HI Baking Mama,
Thought I’d update you about my mooncake baking, hee hee, though it is already passed the season. I had fun making the piglets though it took me longer than I expected. Perhaps because it was my first time. I thought the dough was a little too sweet. However, my family members thought it was alright. I made another version just before the mid autumn celebration using ready made yam paste from Kwong Cheong Thye. It was lighter in texture and something different.
Is there a way I can send you the photoss of the piglet just to express my thanks?
Hi Kim,
Agree with you that it’s quite sweet, though I guess the good thing about making mooncakes yourself is that you can adjust the sweetness level to your liking. And I didn’t know ready-made yam pastes are available for sale! I’m definitely going to try buying them next year.
Glad you had fun. You can send the photos to: peepor@peepor.net. I’m really looking forward! 🙂
Hi Baking Mama,
Apologies for the delay. I just sent the photos over to you.
Kim
they are absolutely adorable!
Thanks! 🙂
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