Chocolate Snowskin

Finally, on my mooncake post. After the first try on mooncake, I am determine to make another batch so that I can participate in AB. The previous try was a snowskin premix powder, so this time I make a trip to Phoon Huat to understand about the ingredients.

I still have sesame paste not used up, but my boy only eats chocolate paste. We bought one box of snowskin from a bakery in JB and he only eats the chocolate snowskin with chocolate filling. As he did not try what  was made in the first batch, I am determine to make a chocolate skin with chocolate filling for him.

I googled the net for quite sometime, but no recipe seem simple enough. Then my mother came to my help with her mooncake recipe book which she borrowed from the library a few days ago. There is a recipe on chocolate snowskin mooncake with chocolate lotus filling. I went to gather the ingredients, snowskin powder and lotus filling. I cannot buy chocolate lotus fillings  because I will have too much filling to clear.

I am not satisfied with having only one type, so with lotus filling, I made the chocolate lotus filling and I made the chocolate skin as well as the strawberry snowskin from HHB's recipe. Luckily I did not use sesame filling, because I ran out of time. Initially my friend (with her kids) are interested to join me in trying out making mooncakes but after much consideration, I felt that time is too short to allow kids. It was a mad rush and my kids are happy to be able to play with each other instead of helping me out too (thank goodness). Good thing I am still on time to send my girl to school.

I did not make alot of chocolate filling since it is a trial batch. I reduced half the lotus filling with the recipe so that the filling can be more chocolatey. So with two types of filling, two types of skin, there are four combination of mooncakes.

The chocolate lotus filling is dry. Pretty sure it is so because of the additional chocolate. The chocolate skin is ok, not too wet to handle but it gets more difficult to handle as time ticks by.  Initially we (my mother came over too) try 20g skin, 30g filling but it is too difficult for us to handle, so we sticked back to 21 - 22g skin, 28g filling. I will challenge the 20,30 next year perhaps.

We still did not get nice prints on the mooncake but I think it has nothing got to do with the mould since my friend can create nice mooncake from the same mould my mother bought from Phoon Huat. The strawberry skin is pretty easy to handle (all thanks to HHB's fine tuning). I did not add any colouring and the pink is very acceptable to me.

I still have both types of filling and the snowskin powder left. Not sure when I will be doing mooncakes but if I do not, what else can I use the powder for?

Here's sharing the chocolate snowskin mooncake recipe from "月餅精選" Published by One Publisher

Ingredients
(A)
130gm water
70gm brown sugar

(B)
40gm cooking chocolate
10gm coco powder
10gm chocolate elmuco (I omitted this)

(C)
20gm shortening
60gm fried glutinous rice flour

Filling
300gm lotus seed paste
1/2 tbsp chocolate elmuco  (I omitted)
60gm cooking chocolate (melted)

Method
1) Cook (A) till boil.
2) Add in ingredient (B), mix well. Leave to cool. Then add in ingredient (C). mix become a smooth dough, divide into equal portions.
3) Wrap in chocolate filling, press into the mould and knock it out. Chill to set.

I am not sure how many can this recipe make ? I forgot to count and I have eaten them all up. :)

I am submitting this to Aspiring Bakers #11 : Mid-Autumn Treats (Sept 2011). Too tired again to write any further.