Spiral mooncake again

Since I have some balance of lotus paste, I decided to  finish it with some baking of spiral mooncakes.
This recipe is repeatable with good and crispy mooncake crust. Sharing here is the recipe if you are interested.

 

Recipe:

Ingredients (makes 12 small pieces of mooncakes)
Note: dough is cut to 6 but later during forming, it will be further cut to half prior wrapping filling thus making 12 as total.

 Filling:   Small size (12 pieces)
300g  lotus paste
 6 salted egg yolks (steam and cut to half)
1tbsp rose flavoured wine.

water dough:
173g plain  flour (Sifted).
23g icing sugar.
60g shortening (can also use cooking oil).
 57g water.
A pinch of salt

oil dough:
131g plain flour.(sifted)
64g  shortening ( can also use cooking oil).
A sachet of matcha ( add accordingly to required green tone)

Method:
Filling:
Treat egg yolks with 1 tbsp of rose wine.  Rest for 5 minutes. Drain off wine and steam egg yolks for 2 minutes. Cut to half size. Set aside to cool.
Divide lotus paste into 12 pieces of 25g portions, shape into rounds and wrap half egg yolks inside, shape to ball shape and set aside.
Water Dough: sieve together flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Add in the oil, water and mix with spatula to form a soft dough. Cover with cling wrap and set aside.
Oil Dough: Sieve plain flour into a mixing bowl. Add oil and color and mix with spatula to form a soft dough.
Divide oil dough into 6  portions about 30g each. Divide water dough to 6 portions about 50g each.
Form ball shapes for both.
Flatten water dough and wrap oil dough in it. Seal properly. Form ball shape.
Carefully roll dough to long shape. Turn over to roll another time to get about 30cm. Roll up like swiss roll. Turn 90 deg to vertical and roll to long shape 35cm length and 4-5cm width. Roll up like Swiss roll.
Carefully Cut to half.  Stand cut dough, cut surface face down. Carefully roll dough to round disc of 7-8cm width, not to spoil the spiral. Ensure core spiral is in the center.
Wrap filling and seal. Careful not to press too hard to spoil the spiral design.
Bake at 180degC for 15-20 mins until baked through or golden if no coloring is added.As the finished mooncake will be very soft, let cool on the baking tray for about 5 ~ 10mins before transferring to a wire rack. Let cool completely.
Store in air tight container. Best eaten within 2-3 days. Reheat in oven if skin is softened.

 

Egg tarts, my favourite

I have attempted many recipes to get a good crust and soft and shiny custard by combining different recipes of crust and custard.
Finally, I found the best where I have crispy layered crust and soft and tasty egg custard, no burnt and cracked surface.
Sharing here are pictures taken from different recipes and my comments.
1st attempt:
Buttery and flaky crust, but to make the pastry dough is quite messy with hot weather.I have to place the pastry in and out of the freezer with messy hands! Egg custard is very tasty but the surface browns easily. Overall, tasty tarts but cumbersome

2nd attempt:

Tried Christine's cookie crust recipe, easy approach to make the crust dough, but I find the egg custard not as creamy and tasty as the first. 

3rd attempt:

Tried herfrozenwings recipe for flaky egg tarts. The crust was much easier to make without the need to refrigerate that often. It is not sticky thus easier to mould. But I find the egg custard not as tasty too compared to the first and second.  So I tried the 4 th attempt using the same crust pastry with different egg custard filling recipe. Read further.

4th attempt:

With the balance of some pastry dough, I used it to make 2nd batch but with different egg custard filling recipe. Tried the heimama recipe. Yes! I found it, not only tasty, soft, the surface is shiny after baked and it does not brown or crack. I do not need to lower the baking temperature at all. So the filling is successful, but the crust was not as flaky as when it was freshly made. It becomes 'biscuity' and slightly hard. Thus the flaky crust needs to be freshly prepared and use. As I normally would make extra crust dough so that I could keep in the freezer and bake a few tarts for our threesome tea time whenever I feel like it. So I am looking for another trial to see if they are perfect. Meanwhile, this combination is the best so far for freshly prepared dough. Can be a keeper recipe, I would say. 

 

Recipe: for dough, I used herfrozenwings' recipe

Water Dough
230 high protein flour, sifted
10gm custard powder, sifted
100g margarine/butter (cold)
4 tbsp castor sugar (55g)
1 egg, lightly beaten
4-5 tbsp water

Oil Dough
150g plain flour, sifted
100gm shortening

Filling:  I used heimama recipe
 140g water
55g sugar (I used granulated sugar)
1½ large eggs, beaten
40g evaporated milk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract (optional)


Method:
Filling: for the custard filling:
Boil water and sugar till sugar dissolved. Let cool completely. Add beaten egg, evaporated milk and vanilla extract and mix well. Sieve 3 times. Set aside.

Water dough:  mix flour and custard powder together and rub in butter/margarine until it resembles breadcrumbs. (I used dough cutter to cut the butter into the flour till it forms like breadcrumbs). Add in the sugar, mix well and put in the egg and 4 tbsps of water, mix all with hand until it forms into a dough. Knead the dough by hand, will take several minutes to knead until it becomes a smooth dough. Cover with plastic film and leave the dough aside or put in the fridge.

Oil dough: Mix the flour and the shortening until it comes together. ( it's a little tough to form into a dough, just keep gathering the flour and rub in shortening till it forms a rough dough ). Let dough rest for 10 minutes.

 Preparing the pastry
1. Flatten water dough. Place oil dough in the center of water dough and wrap oil dough in water dough.
 2. Roll the dough flat into a rectangle shape.
 3. Fold one end of the dough up to 2/3 of the dough.
 4. Fold the other end of the dough ( remaining 1/3 )on top of the folded dough.
 5. Turn the dough 90 degree .
 6. Flatten the dough once again and roll into a rectangle shape. Repeat these steps  2 times more.

a) Put the dough in the fridge to rest for 30 minutes.

b) After 30 minutes, take the pastry out from the fridge, if you find it a little hard, you can thaw it for 10 minutes before shaping the tarts. Roll the pastry out to a big dough with a thickness of 0.3cm. Use a round cutter ( slightly bigger than your tart ) to cut the dough out. Place the dough onto the tart case, pressing the bottom and gently pressing the sides of the tart. Repeat until you finish lining all the tarts. Preheat the oven at 200C

c) Pour the filling about 70% full and bake for 25-30 minutes. Pls check the appropriate temp for your oven, it's really hard to advise. I baked mine at 200c for about 25minutes.

 

奶黃月餅(Egg custard mooncake)

Hong Kong Peninsula Hotel's famous 奶黃月餅...though I have not tasted, I have seen many food bloggers mentioned it.
So I started searching for the closest recipe that I could find. Found this from a retired HK pastry chef from another renowned pastry shop who was kind enough to share his secret.
I was glad that the mooncakes turned out excellent not only on it's appearance but taste as well.
I will share his link here for the recipe. 

http://tvb4life.pixnet.net/blog/post/156539258-食譜--第一代嘉麟樓點心廚%E3%80%80奶黃月餅

So enjoy and happy mid autumn festival to all.
Pictures of my mooncakes using his recipe as follows.

Before bake:

After baked:

 

 

Flower or Fan...Lotus Paste Puff Pastry(蓮蓉酥)

Today, I did a small batch of lotus paste puff pastry, some called it fan while others called it flower design. Anyway, they are delicious!
I did these last year using red bean as filling. Since I did not buy any red bean paste, I substituted with lotus paste which is equally tasty. The puff pastry that I did last year used butter as I did not have shortening in hand.
This year, I followed the recipe ardently that uses shortening.
Comparatively, the puff seems puffier and crispier to the ones that used butter.
This recipe was extracted from my kitchen flavours. She has detailed the making of the flower shape. In her notes, she added additional flour as her dough was wet. I did not as my dough was manageable.
I enclosed photos of last year with red bean filling and this year with lotus paste filling.

Last year...

This year....

 

Recipe -  Fan Pastry

Adapted from kitchen flavour
http://mycookinggallery.blogspot.com/2012/02/fan-pastry.html

 Ingredients
Water Dough
120gm flour
1/4 teaspoon maltose (I use golden syrup)
20gm sugar
35gm shortening
65gm water


Oil Dough
100gm flour
60gm shortening


Filling
400gm red bean paste


Method :
Water Dough : Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth dough. Divide it into 16 parts of 15gm each.
Oil Dough : Mix all the ingredients to form a smooth paste. Divide it into 16 parts of 10gm each.
Filling : Divide the red bean paste into 16 parts of 25gm each.

Wrap the oil dough with water dough.
Roll out the dough into thin sheet. Then roll it up like Swiss Roll. Repeat this step one more time. Let it rest for 10 minutes.
Flatten the above dough and wrap the filling in.
Roll out the dough flat using a rolling pin. Along the round edge cut the pastry into 8 equal portions about 2.5cm thick.
Twist the edges into petal shapes. Egg wash twice and stick some black sesame seeds at the centre.
Bake at 200C for 20-25 minutes.