Snow skin mooncake (a video recipe) for traditional Chinese Mid-autumn day. This time, we are enjoying creamy custard filling.
Mooncakes are the most popular symbolized festival food for our Mid-autumn day. There are a large group of mooncakes to choose in recent years. Snow skin mooncake is a new family member compared to traditional cantonese mooncakes.
I am quite excited but also a little bit blue, as we will celebrate our Mid-autumn day in following two weeks. For me, mid-autumn day is the most important holiday along with the year because it is my birthday. Most people of my generation in China celebrate birthday based on our lunar calendar. When I was still a young girl, my grandma always cooked yummy dishes, make mooncakes and Sichuan glutinous rice cake to celebrate my birthday. To me, the new city of Shenzhen is familiar but also strange. I do not have any relatives here. The emotion of missing my mom, dad and grand parents is becoming stronger and stronger. And my way to help me out is to make yummy food and share with others. So I make a large box of snow skin mooncake for my husband’s colleagues. If you prefer a colored version, check this post: snow skin mooncakes.
I use creamy custard filling for this year’s snow skin mooncake, as I just can’t reject the milky and creamy taste. And I have also posted a famous Dim Sum creamy custard bun previously using the same filling.
To make the snow skin mooncake with the best results, I highly recommend measuring all the ingredients. And there are several tips before you starting making your own.
- To make the perfect custard filling, custard powder is necessary. It is firstly imported by some bakery stores in Hong Kong and now becomes a popular baking ingredient in Mainland China too. It increases the milky aroma and adds a light yellow color to the filling. However if it really too difficult to acquire, you can skip it with some sacrifice of the taste. And if you plan to skip custard powder, using more egg yolks can help to improve the color.
- During the whole processing, stir the liquid forcefully and keep the fire as slow as possible, otherwise the flour might be caking. After heating, continue to stir the filling for several minutes just like the video until the texture becomes very very fine and smooth
- Kneading the wrapper dough is another important tip. This will help to keep the wrapper soft after refrigeration. And usually the wrapper will be slightly sticky even after refrigeration; you can coat your hands with pan-fried glutinous rice flour or ware a kitchen plastic glove.
- In is important to coat the mooncake stamp each time before shaping, otherwise the mooncake might stick to the stamp.
- Helpful ingredient links from Amazon for the appearance reference: water milled glutinous rice flour, water milled rice flour, wheat starch, mooncake stamp. You can try to search them in large local Asian stores.
Snow Skin Mooncake-Video Recipe with Custard Filling
Ingredients
- 1/3 cup of glutinous rice flour for coating
Creamy custard filling
- 1.5 tbsp. custard powder
- 1/2 cup wheat starch +2 tablespoons cake flour
- 100 ml milk
- 2 tbsp. unsalted butter ,30grams
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar ,60 grams
- 2 eggs ,100g or 1 large egg+ another yolk (whisked)
wrapper
- 45 g glutinous rice flour
- 35 g rice flour water milled version
- 20 g wheat starch
- 40 g sugar or sugar powder
- 185 g milk or unsweetened coconut milk
- 18 g vegetable oil
Instructions
Make creamy custard filling
- In a small pot over slowest heat, dissolve sugar with milk.
- Shift all the flours and custard powder quickly. Stir to combine well. Add egg and butter in. Keep stirring forcefully in the whole process to combine everything and avoid caking. Heat until the mixture becomes very thick and form a paste texture. Remove from fire and keep stirring for several minutes until it becomes fine and smooth.
- Transfer out, cool down and cover with plastic wrapper. Refrigerate for several hours until hardened so you can shape the filling easily.
Make the wrapper
- Combine milk, sugar and oil well and then mix with wheat starch, rice flour and glutinous rice flour.
- Strain once and set aside for 30 minutes. Cover with plastic wrappers and steam over high fire for around 30 minutes until it becomes slightly transparent. Transfer out and stir with chop stickers forcefully for several minutes until fine and smooth. Transfer to a plate and cover with plastic wrapper. Knead with both hands for several minutes until the surface becomes oily. (This is really important to have a soft taste wrapper, so do not skip this). Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before assembling the snow skin mooncake.
Make coating flour
- In a fry pan, stir fry raw glutinous rice flour on medium low heat until the flour turns light yellow. Remove it from the heat. Set aside to cool down.
Assemble
- Measure each wrapper around 20grams and filling 30 grams. And then shape both of wrapper and filling to balls.
- Prepare the dusting flour, filling, wrapper and mooncake stamp. Assemble the mooncake stamp well and then dust with flour. Shake off extra flour and set aside.
- Wrap the filling with wrapper and seal completely. And then shape to a ball firstly and further to an oval. Place the oval to stamp (unsealed side first), flat with bottom with fingers; push the shaping tool to stamp the flowers. Then demold carefully. If you find the mooncake is sticky on the stamp, use the other hand to help separating.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Love your blog and receipes! Very detailed and yet easy to follow as its very clear. Well done keep it up! Cheers! Singapore
Thank you!! Rain.
love your recipes and videos!! Thank you!
You are the most welcome. Michele. Happy cooking ahead.
just love it….thanks so much for sharing ^^
Thank you. Happy cooking ^^.
Thank you for the video! It is simple & easy to follow. I have a question: for the milk, what kind of milk do you use? can I use fresh milk? thank you.
Hi Lidia,
I use normal milk from supermarket. Fresh milk is perfect! Happy cooking.
Dear elaine
May I ask why need to set aside 30min before steam?
Hi Jo,
This can help the ingredients combine well and we can get a much fine and smooth texture after steaming.
Can I replace wheat starch with potatoe starch or corn starch? I can not find it in the supermarket.I live in Malaysia
Hi there,
I did not use corn starch in my mooncake dough before but I think it should be fine.
Thank you so much for replying :)) I will try using it and let’s see how it turns out ^^
You are the most welcome. Good luck and happy cooking.
Thanks so much for posting this recipe. I’m dying to try it out but I don’t have a food scale. I know that is the most accurate measurement. However, can you give the the closest measurement in terms of American measuring cups & spoons? Plus if you want to use salty egg yolks, is it the same proportion of eggs? Thanks so much for any help you can give.
Hi Ann,
Thanks for the suggestion. I will try to provide a closest measurement in cups and spoons. But I still highly recommend measure the ingredients with a kitchen scale.
Hi. May I know what is cake flour? Is it low protein flour
It is low gluten flour.
The plastic molds are so pretty, come in a variety of flower stamps, and can be ordered for only about $5 on Amazon.com. Would standard sugar cookie dough or any other kind of shell work for other times of the year? Would make a lovely Easter treat.
That’s right David. The molds are quite simple but very helpful.
thanks for the vedio i love it good job.
You are the most welcome!