By Ellen L. Published: 2017-09-25
This lovely hand pressed cake is a very popular recent incarnation of the traditional Chinese mooncake, the Custard Mooncake 奶皇月餅, which is actually a repurposing of a traditional Cantonese dim sum favorite, the Custard Bun 奶皇包, a sweet bread bun filled with luscious soft and sweet custard filling.
An enterprising chef at the fabulous Peninsula Hotel decided to tuck the creamy custard filling into a traditional mooncake and created the first of these 30 some years ago and since then they have become more and more popular. (And expensive!)
We wanted to make some custard mooncakes for Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋節but decided to put a twist on it and wrap the creamily delicious custard inside a delicately soft rice flavored mochi like wrappingto make Snow Skin Custard Mooncakes, or 奶皇冰皮月餅. OMGosh...yummilicious and light as a snowflake!
There are two main parts of this mooncake, the custard filling part and the snow skin part. You start with the snow skin part cuz you will need to steam it for longer. This snow skin requires more ingredients and is a tiny bit more complicated than our snow skin in the snow skin mooncake recipe we wrote about previously but it is definitely worth the extra effort.
It comes together into a very stable dough, soft yet just stretchy enough and really, really tasty with the milk and evaporated milk melding with the glutinous rice flour and rice flour to create a creamy ricey flavor that was very much like mochi. Which meant, naturally, that we ended up eating quite a bit of the dough before we ever got around to making the mooncakes!
Tip: There are two types of canned milk products needed in this recipe: evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk. Evaporated milk is just milk reduced of water by 60% and sweetened condensed milk is the same except sugar is added. Be sure to add in the right milk at the right place!
The mix is steamed for an hour and then left to cool. The steamed mixture will seem strange at first, quite un-mochi like, even perhaps a bit oily (due to oil added in to mix). Don't worry, just let it cool until you can handle it and then knead the dough until it just stops sticking to kneading surface, adding glutinuous rice flour a tbsp at a time as needed.
It will probably still seem sticky, I know mine did, but just cover and leave it for a while until completely cooled and you will find that the texture has changed, becoming soft, smooth and quite mochi like.
The second part is the filling, of course, your lovely luscious custard filling. You will also need to steam this but for a shorter time so start this as soon as you get your snow skin steaming away.
Yummmm...custard powder, milk powder, sweetened condensed milk, coconut cream, butter...so many creamy milky flavors all in one filling!
The custard mix is made in two parts as custard normally is in order to avoid over heating and therefore curdling the egg. Once the two parts are mixed together everything is steamed. The custard will come out much more firm than a normal custard, which is fine. It will also be a bit oily from the butter.
Once cool enough to handle fluff the custard with a fork. Let cool completely before weighing and rolling into balls in preparation for mooncake wrapping. Ah...such a lovely yellow!
And now for my favorite part, the part where the magic is! I get to use my wonderful traditional wooden mooncake molds to hand press my mooncakes! All those fiddly bits come together and...MAGIC with a bang!...a perfectly engraved mooncake comes into being, made just as it has been made for centuries!
But first...there are some technical points I should point out...
The wrapping of the mooncake can be a wee bit tricky. You have to decide the weight of filling and skin used for each mooncake so that you end up with exactly the right amount to fill up your mooncake mold, whatever size of mold you decide to use.
So you will need to use a food scale. You also want to have just enough skin to cover the filling in a thin, not thick, layer. Unfortunately you will just have to do a bit of trial and error until you get the right amount.
No need to despair, though, you can use our ratio for a small mooncake mold to help you decide the ratios for your particular mooncake and mooncake mold. Our small mooncake mold filled up at 35g total for this snow skin custard mooncake, so we ended up using 16g of skin and 19g of filling for each mooncake.
And because we used our easy 'cheat' method of wrapping mooncake skins (more info below) we added an extra 5g to the skin weight (which was cut off during wrapping.)
The other tricky part of wrapping the mooncake is how to end up with a thin skin all around the mooncake. If you just roll the skin out and fold it around the custard filling you will end up with a mooncake that has both thick and thin sides, not very pretty.
But no worries we have come up with an easy mooncake wrapping 'cheat' that allows you to wrap a thin fairly even skin around your mooncake with a minimum of fuss. Check it out in our next post with lots of how to photos. Use our 'cheat' method of wrapping mooncakes and you will end up with very professional looking mooncakes, if I don't say so myself!
Ah...all this storm and fury...and what does it signify? Just simply yummilicious and gorgeous mooncakes is all. We were super, super pleased with these Snow Skin Custard Mooncakes: creamy luscious custard inside, soft scrummy tastily tender skin outside. Each bite a real delight! Happy Mid-Autumn Festival to all!
Snow Skin Custard Mooncake Recipe
奶皇冰皮月餅
Prep time: Cook time:
Ingredients:
Snow Skin
Custard Part I
Custard Part II
Directions:
For the Snow Skin: Mix all the ingredients (except the extra glutinous rice flour) together. Pour into a dish that will fit your steamer and steam over medium heat for an hour. Let cool.
When cool enough to handle, dust with glutinous rice flour and knead until soft, adding glutinous rice flour one tbsp at a time until the dough just stops sticking to work surface. Cover and let rest until cooled completely. The dough should be much less sticky after resting
Mix the custard powder, milk powder, starch for Custard Part I together. Push mixture through a sieve to get rid of any lumps. Add in condensed milk, coconut cream and egg and stir well.
Add the ingredients for Custard Part II to a small pot and heat over low heat until just boiling. Take off heat and add in a thin stream to Custard Part I, stirring constantly. Pour mixture into a dish that fits steamer and steam over medium heat for 20 mins. Let cool completely. Fluff up with a fork.
Weigh out the snow skin wrap and custard filling for each mooncake. You will need figure out your weights by trial and error but as a guide, our mooncake mold fit 35g and we ended up using 16g (plus 5g extra if using our 'cheat' method of wrapping mooncakes) for each skin and 19g for each custard filling.
Roll weighed custard into a ball. Roll out weighed snow skin into disc large enough to cover the custard ball.
Wrap skin around custard according to our 'cheat' mooncake wrapping method here. Once finished wrapping, roll the mooncake in glutinous rice flour until covered all around. Press into mooncake mold firmly. Flip wooden mold over close to working surface and your snow skin mooncake should just slide out. If it doesn't tap gently on the back of the mold.
Your mooncake is finished and ready to eat! Enjoy and Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Tip: Store covered in fridge for up to a week. If keeping longer freeze for up to a month, putting it into the refrigerator overnight to allow to thaw before serving.
Mid-Autumn Madness at The Hong Kong Cookery:
Lotus Paste Egg Yolk Mooncake 雙黃白蓮蓉月餅
Boiled Water Caltrop 鮮煮菱角
Green Mung Bean Cakes 綠豆糕
Osmanthus Flower Jelly 桂花糕
Fruit Mooncake 水果月餅
