mooncake making session

as i grow older, i feel a strong inclination to 'go back to my roots' - i am 'rediscovering' the origins of various festivals (i know the gist of them at the back of my head - just need to retrieve the details from my lousy data bank), 'celebrating' them and picking up various dialects (very often, i still can't get the correct enunciation though). it is also my intention to 'educate' li'l princess as much as possible about her roots.

last year, i attempted to make glutinous rice dumplings after a long hiatus away from the kitchen (i cook frequently but making goodies is another story altogether) and this year, i (with the suggestion of my friend) decided on making snow skin mooncake. being the domestic goddess that i am :P, i've mostly been successful... haha...

i'm glad that this year, we had the opportunity to invite our friends over to join us in our mooncake making session! my plan was to let our li'l ones have the opportunity to experience making mooncake and thus, prepared all the ingredients in the appropriate proportions in plastic ware beforehand but in the end, it was the mummies, and not the babies, who got down and dirty! nevertheless, it was a fun session and i look forward to more fun times in the future!

as always, photos...

ingredients for making mango snowskin mooncakes :

skin :

50g Hong Kong 'Gao Fen'

35g Icing Sugar

15g Shortening

60ml Cold Water

Fresh Mango Puree (to taste)

other ingredients - ready made lotus paste (i could not find the ingredients necessary to make the paste from scratch so ended up buying ready made ones from phoon huat - fortunately these ones weren't too sweet!), melon seeds, salted egg yolks. i still have lots of lotus paste leftover - anyone has suggestions on what i can make with them?

finished dough portioned equally (we try!)

the mess after! fortunately i have a helper to clean up! :P

the above recipe will yield about 8 small snowskin mooncakes (we made less and the finished product had 'too much skin' and insufficient fillings!)

my finished product... not bad eh?