Cantonese moon cakes with coconut and lotus fillings

As I noted in my previous blog post, discovering the recipe for perfect Cantonese moon cakes was a tough project. There were all these little secrets and keys that no one talked about for some reason, but once they were figured out, this turned out to be a master recipe (published on Zester Daily) that anyone can cook from with ease.  

Granted, it does take a bit of time to assemble the fillings, but once you have them done -- and they can be made a couple of days ahead of time -- you can then start practicing actually forming the moon cakes, and you'll soon be able to knock these babies out in no time flat.

The biggest secret to making traditional Cantonese-style moon cakes is the caramel syrup that finds its way into not only the fillings, but also the glaze and even the pastry itself. When I bit into my very first successful moon cake, the caramel provided that gentle chewiness that was always missing before that.

Korean flour & Meiguilu

Traditionally, Cantonese moon cakes were made with a sugar syrup called tangqing, or "sugar green," that was supposed to be allowed to ferment for at least two or three months. An old cookbook on Chinese sweets says firmly that it "cannot be used immediately after it is boiled." Well, when I read that, I was truly dismayed because I had less than a month to crack the secret, and this was definitely not helping.

The key came in the form of a recipe I uncovered by the great Sichuan chef Chen Kenmin (Chinese name: Chen Jianmin 陳建民), as I explain in the second half of the Zester article. Chef Chen didn't talk about the caramel per se, but there were enough clues to figure it out. Then, I fiddled around with his ratio of fat and sugar to flour in order to get that super thin wrapper I so desired.

Thin, thin dough

In the end, the high amount of caramel and oil in the dough ended up making it truly easy to wrap the pastry evenly around the filling. Prior to this trial-and-error discovery, I'd always ended up with cracked dough or thick bases on the pastries. 

Before this, too, I could never get the dough to achieve that delectable degree of thinness that allows the pastry to be so crisp and yet chewy, and also offers that irresistible Chinese contrast of the soft and luscious filling. I mean, when I cut open that first moon cake that you see on the right here (it has the fruit and nut filling recipe posted on Zester), I couldn't have been prouder.

Then, when a food-loving friend from Nanjing came over for tea last week, I was still hesitant about serving him these cakes because I didn't want anyone to shatter my illusions. But my husband insisted, and the friend beamed when he tasted the first mouthful. "These are the best I've ever had," he said. Whew.

If you've tried making Cantonese moon cakes before and failed, you'll see a couple other changes here that end up making all the difference in the world. For instance, there is no leavening in the dough. Every recipe I'd consulted called for baking powder or baking soda or Chinese alkaline water (aka lye water, which is just a bad translation of jianshui) or something to make the dough rise. That was a big mistake. This dough doesn't need it at all, and in fact leavening just serves to fuzz up the pattern on the cakes because the dough, of course, rises. Leave it out and the pastry becomes crumbly and yet tender, and whatever pattern you use for your molds will remain clear.

Bitter green sprout in lotus seed

Another small difference is the butter that's used in today's recipes, in the next blog post, and on Zester. Butter is definitely not traditional -- lard is the fat of choice in old Chinese recipes -- but I am certain that if Chinese pastry chefs had had the option of using butter instead of lard, they wouldn't have hesitated for a second!

Students of Chinese will note that while both date paste and red bean paste are referred to as ni, or mud, today's two fillings are correctly called rong, which is a type of mallow or hibiscus; this is a Cantonese word often used in the names of fluffy foods, as can be seen in that old American-Chinese classic, egg foo yung (furong dan) or minced chicken (jirong). 

In addition to the dark caramel glaze on Zester, I have included one extra glaze recipe here in order to give you the option of a blonder moon cake. This is especially helpful if you have a limited number of molds alongside an enthusiastic number of fillings, because this way your lighter-colored fillings (like coconut and lotus paste) can be identified more easily.

Both recipes are enough for 10 three-inch moon cakes or 30 one-inch mini cakes.

Assorted pastry molds with rabbit!

Coconut filling 
Yerong 椰蓉 
Guangdong
Makes about 3 cups packed

14 ounces sweetened flaked coconut
¼ cup butter, softened
¼ teaspoon sea salt
½ cup powdered sugar
¼ cup coconut rum

1. Shake the coconut into a large work bowl and break apart any lumps.

2. Add the rest of the ingredients and stir. 

3. Let the filling sit for at least 30 minutes so that all the rum can be absorbed. Refrigerate until chilled, and then roll the filling into balls as directed.

Lotus, pine nut & salted yolk filling   
Lianrong songzi danhuang  蓮蓉松子蛋黃

Creamy & nutty

Guangdong
Makes about 2½ cups

6 ounces dried lotus seeds
¼ cup butter, softened
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ cup powdered sugar
¾ cup caramel (see Zester recipe)

3 tablespoons Meiguilu (Chinese rose-flavored white liquor; see Tips)

1 teaspoon rose water (optional)

4 ounces toasted pine nuts

10 salted egg yolks

2 tablespoon Meiguilu

1. Soak the lotus seeds for 8 hours or overnight. Drain. Place the seeds in a heatproof bowl and steam them for about 30 minutes, or until very tender. Remove from the steamer and let them come to room temperature.

Wrap the yolk with the lotus paste

2. Remove the bitter green sprout that will appear in many of the seeds. To do this, gently squeeze the seed as shown in the third photo above; if you can see a green "tongue" sticking out at you, open the seed and simply pluck out and discard the sprout. 

3. Place the lotus seeds in a food processor fitted with a metal blade and pulse them until the seeds are reduced to a fine gravel. Add the butter, salt, sugar, caramel, and 3 tablespoons Meiguilu, and then whiz them together to make a fine paste. Dump the paste into a medium work bowl; taste and adjust the seasoning. Stir in the pine nuts until they are easily distributed. Chill the filling.

4. While the filling is in the refrigerator, place the egg yolks on a ovenproof plate and sprinkle them with the the 2 tablespoons Meiguilu, as this will remove some of the gaminess. Bake them at 375 degrees for about 7 minutes to soften and cook them; this will also release some of the oils in the yolks and turn them creamier. Remove the yolks from the plate and let them come to room temperature. (If you wish, you can use the yolks as is, especially if you are using chicken eggs rather than duck eggs; they'll still be good.)

5. Divide the lotus filling into 10 pieces, and roll each piece into a ball. (Wetting your hands occasionally makes this a lot easier.) Push one yolk into each ball and then cover the yolk with the lotus filling.

Dough patch

6. When you wrap any moon cakes that have salted egg yolks in them, pinch off a half-inch marble of the dough and set it aside while you use the rest of the dough to wrap the filling as usual. Then, when you press the ball into your mold, you will usually see the yolk poking through the bottom, since it is harder than both the filling and the dough. So, use that little piece of leftover dough as a patch on the bottom, and then smooth it down.

Light glaze 

Danse danshui 淡色蛋水  

Guangdong

Enough for 20 large or 30 small moon cakes

1 lightly beaten egg yolk

2 teaspoons milk

1 tablespoon caramel (see Zester recipe)

1. Mix these ingredients together in a small bowl. Brush the glaze lightly over the tops and sides of the unbaked moon cakes.

2. Store any leftovers covered in the refrigerator for not more than a day, as the yolk will start to dry out.

Tips

You can use any type of shredded coconut you like; just adjust the sweetening to your taste.

In both of these recipes, and in the glazes too, liquors are used as the liquid. This serves to season the pastries and also to provide moisture that is easily evaporated as the moon cakes bake. If you don't use alcohol, just add a little more caramel to thin out the yolk, while for the fillings, use enough caramel instead of the liquor to bind the ingredients. Don't add another liquid, as the fillings will then be too moist.

Coconut rum is used here to heighten the rum flavor; Malibu is my favorite brand. However, you can use any other liquor here to fit your taste. 

Dried lotus seeds can be found in just about any Chinese market or herbal store. Look, as always, for places with fast turnover. Check the bag for bugs and debris. Fresh lotus seeds should appear relatively chubby with little wrinkling.

Be sure and remove the green centers from the lotus seeds before using them in any dish. This is easy once the seeds have been soaked, as they soften once they plump up and can be squeezed open.

Storebought salted yolks

Don't try using a food mill on the lotus seeds. They are much too dry. A food processor works perfectly, though.

I like adding a bit of Cortas brand rose water to the lotus paste to heighten the suggestion of roses in the Meiguilu white liquor. You can't really taste the roses -- I don't want pastries that smell like Nana anyway -- but it provides a subtle undercurrent. This is, of course, totally optional.

Shelled pine nuts can be used either raw or toasted in this recipe. I prefer toasted here for the heightened nut flavor and color contrast. Either buy the pine nuts toasted or toast them yourself in the oven or a dry wok. The main thing to look for is freshness, so check the expiration date. Store unused pine nuts in the freezer if you don't use them often, as this will keep the oils from going rancid.

This time of the year, salted yolks can be found prepackaged (without the whites) in many Chinese markets, usually in the same case as the other eggs. Make sure they are from the U.S., rather than China. Refrigerate any leftover yolks in a sealed bag and use them within a week or two. Discard any that look or smell wrong.

As the moister moon cakes sit around, the sugars in their fillings will start to gently soften the pastry dough. And that is not a bad thing. In the first day or two, these moon cakes will be nicely crumbly and buttery. But then they slowly turn ever-so-pillowy, the pastry wrapper gently conforming to the rich filling. It's all rather comforting, in some strange way.

If you would prefer the pastry crisper, just reheat the moon cakes in a 325 degree F oven; do keep an eye on them so that the moon cakes don't burn.

Store the moon cakes in plastic zippered bags. Try not to stack them up, as gravity will before long work its own magic and start to squish the cakes down. That's why commercial moon cakes always have their own individual coffins -- excuse me -- plastic indentations to keep them in shape.

Twelfth Month congee

China's traditional year is set to the natural rhythms of the world. Divided into twelve lunar months and 24 solar seasons, it is surprisingly accurate. I remember how one of them, Startled Insects or Jingzhe, made this so clear.

We were living in the outskirts of Taipei in the hot springs area called New Beitou. Back then, the area was still relatively undeveloped, and so some wild friends took up residence around our little home. A huge toad lived in our teeny back yard and took care of all the roaches that crossed his path, leaving little roach mummies rolling around on the concrete. A solitary bat would hand upside-down during the day behind a board propped against the wall and always come home at the sign of first light. A praying mantis made its home in the big poinsettia tree (yes) that grew by our front gate. 

Dried longans

Geckos made the fuse box by the front window their very own elephant graveyard, as that is where they went to die. It was filled with a deep layer of filagree skeletons, and we watched one night as a weak, skinny gecko slowly made its way up and into the crack by the wooden fuse box door. My husband is a dedicated animal lover, and he tried to redirect the old gecko away from its grave, but the little guy was determined, so it went, step by painful step, up to join its clan.

Which leads back in a roundabout way to the lunar calendar. I was sweeping the leaves off of the moss ground in our little front yard one morning before going to work and noticed the trilling of katydids, a sound that had been absent over the length of Taipei's long and dreary winter. Checking the calendar inside, it was the beginning of Startled Insects, a day that usually lands in early March and explains by its name that bugs are awakened at this time out of their long slumber by thunder and spring rains. 

We had no unusual storms then to speak of that I can remember, but we certainly did have our little insect friends back on the scene again. And that was the beginning of my fascination with the Chinese lunar calendar.

Korean mixed rice & beans

But it is still winter now by any calendar's calculation. The last month before Chinese New Year (which falls on January 23rd this year) is called Layue; this is when we have the two-week seasons called Slight Frostiness (Xiaohan) and Great Frostiness (Dahan). Nurturing foods are most welcome on these chilly days, and today's toe-warming congee is so perfect for this time of year that that it is even named after the month: Labazhou (congee for the eighth day of the Twelfth Month).  

You can vary the ingredients as you please (no need to be a stickler about the number eight, really), the only real requirement being that the ingredients be fresh and there be a nice balance of grain, beans, nuts, and dried fruit. If you overload it with the dried fruit, for example, it becomes too sweet and jammy. So clean out your cupboards, see what is already there, and toss in whatever you like, keeping the ratio more or less 3 parts grain : 1 part beans : 1 part nuts and seeds : 2 parts dried fruit.

Soak all of the grains, beans, and nuts overnight so that they plump up and cook more quickly. Things like peanuts and dried lotus seeds, for example, take a very long time to cook until they are just barely soft, so consider cooking them separately.  

Leftovers can be stored in the fridge, and this is one of those times when a microwave is indispensable, because if you boil the congee again, it tends to cook down into a paste; a good alternative would be steaming, as this too doesn't give the grains and beans the chance to break down further.

Twelfth Month congee can be served for breakfast or late at night; it is too filling and sweet for other times of the day, unless you have elderly folks or little children in need of something hot and comforting. 


Twelfth Month congee 
Labazhou 臘八粥

Plumped up ingredients

All over China
Serves 4 to 6 generously

1 cup rice or mixed-grain rice (see Tips)
3 tablespoons millet or steel cut oatmeal or other grains
3 tablespoons hulled sunflower seeds or other seeds
3 tablespoons mung (green) beans
3 tablespoons adzuki or other beans
3 tablespoons broken walnuts or other nuts
3 tablespoons skinned peanuts
20 dried lotus seeds, optional  (see Tips)
9 cups filtered water, plus more as needed
12 Chinese dates (jujubes), pitted and cut in half
4 tablespoons goqi (goji or wolfberries), or a handful of dried pitted longan (see Tips)
Brown or rock sugar to taste
Dash of sea salt
Toasted sesame seeds, optional

Perfect consistency

1. Start this at least 10 hours before you want to serve it. Rinse the rice, sunflower seeds, beans, and walnuts, place in a large saucepan, and cover them with water by about 1 inch. Rinse the peanuts and lotus seeds and place them in a small saucepan before covering them with water. Let both pans sit overnight to plump up the ingredients, and then drain off the water before adding about 7 cups filtered water to the large saucepan and about 2 cups to the smaller one. Rinse the dried fruit.

2. Bring both pans to a boil and simmer them until the beans are soft in the large saucepan and both the peanuts and lotus seeds are soft in the other; the larger saucepan will probably be done first. At this point, add the dried fruit to the smaller pan and add enough water to cover; bring the smaller pan to a boil and then lower it again to a simmer so that the fruits have time to plump up without disintegrating. When cooked but not mushy, combine the two and add sugar to taste, as well as a little salt. Slowly simmer the congee until the sugar is melted; taste and adjust the sweetness, if necessary.

3. Serve with a sprinkle of toasted sesame seeds on top, if you wish; it's not necessary, but it adds another layer of flavor to this delicious congee.

The little green tongue = bitterness

Tips

Cook the peanuts and lotus seeds separately because they take much longer than the other ingredients.

Add the dried fruits to the peanuts and lotus seeds later on so that they stay whole and don't mush up.

Be sure and open each softened lotus seed, as they often have bitter green sprouts inside. Just pinch off the green shoot and toss it away.

Korean markets often sell a mixture of rice and beans that is great for labazhou because half of your work is already done for you. (See the photo above.)

Feel free to experiment with the ingredients, using raisins and dried cranberries, for example, instead of some or all of the dried fruit. Cashews and almonds are delicious in here. And sweetening it with honey adds a completely different aroma to the final dish.

Dried longans (see photo above) lend a wonderful perfume and are worth seeking out. The fruit looks a little like a dried lychee, and when fresh they share a certain similarity, as both have white flesh surrounding a black seed and encased in a thin shell. Longan shells, though, are tan rather than the red of fresh lychees, and when dried the flesh turns into chewy little nuggets. All they need is a soaking in boiling water to wake them up.