Colourful Snowskin Mooncakes With Sweet & Savoury Surprises

The mid of the autumn season is arriving soon, in less than two weeks’ time. That is when we will be celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival – on the 15th day of the 8th lunar month. That is also when we will be eating mooncakes and drinking tea under the watchful eyes of Chang’e, the goddess of the moon, and her pet rabbit.

I used the exact same recipe as I did three years ago for my batch of snowskin mooncake this year. Almost exact, because I altered some of the steps for the fun of it:

1. Instead of using only salted egg yolks to fill in the center of the lotus paste, I also used balls of black sesame lotus paste to make them look visually more interesting and appealing when they are sliced into halves.
2. I played around with the colours of the mooncake skin to create uniquely hued rotund pieces of the mooncake. These colours bring to mind the poetic and idyllic scene of a leisurely day and an afternoon of Chinese tea drinking and light snacking.
3. This time, instead of the unbranded, transparent boxes of shortening, I decided to use the Crisco brand of shortening. This has helped tremendously to make the skin of the mooncake a lot smoother and softer, which in turn ensures that the skin does not easily become hard after refrigeration. All thanks to the advice given by the friendly staff at Phoon Huat, Bencoolen Street! They were also the ones who told me to make sure that I bought the right kind of glutinous rice flour: the fried glutinous rice flour is the only type we should use for making snowskin mooncake as it’s cooked and hence ready for consumption; the normal type of glutinous rice flour would not be suitable for this purpose as it is raw flour that has not been processed.
4. Last but not least, I made some snowskin piggy mooncakes as well, as shown in the pictures here. These are specially made just for my family; I hope they will love them too. One thing I am still dissatisfied with is that the skin texture is a bit patchy – not as smooth as I would like them to be. Not sure what the reason is but I’ll try to find out next year (if I ever make this again).

What a great way to enjoy the season of the Mid-Autumn Festival. 😀