Cheesecake Snow Skin Mooncakes- Recipe
The pink ones are strawberry-flavoured and the patchy purples ones are purple sweet potato. Since I'm not happy with the overall effect of the purple sweet potato ones, I'm only going to post the recipe for strawberry, for now. The filling is the same: vanilla cheesecake.
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival's coming up, and I really wanted to try making mooncakes this year. I've never made any kind before- neither the Hong Kong ones that are the most well-known, nor the round flaky Teochew ones, nor snow skin mooncakes.
Snow skin mooncakes are so called because of the soft, chewy, mochi-like outer casing (white like snow before colouring and flavouring is added). The sticky rice 'skin' is made with koh fun (cooked/ fried glutinous rice flour). Since it's already cooked it's ready to eat, and doesn't need any further cooking.
Alas, I didn't manage to take very good photos as my camera's on the blink. Still, these are easy to make, and you get the general idea. The only slightly tricky bit is getting the texture of the snow skin dough right: soft and pliable without being sticky, but not too tough or it wouldn't mould properly.
The purple ones are uneven for two reasons: one, I didn't mash the purple sweet potatoes smoothly enough- and two, I didn't knead it into the dough thoroughly enough. The strawberry ones were flavoured and coloured with a few drops of strawberry flavouring, which was a lot easier to work with.
One thing to note is that the amount of cheesecake filling/ how big the balls need to be/ the amount of snow skin dough you use per mould will depend very much on the size of your mould. This will take a bit of trial and error: I'll give a visual of this with my next mooncake venture, for sure.
Anyway, let's try this!
Ingredient for Cheesecake Filling:
-200g cream cheese
-2 eggs
-75g caster sugar
-1tsp vanilla
Ingredients for Snow Skin Dough:
-130g koh fun flour
-And additional tbsp koh fun flour for kneading
-130g icing sugar
-130ml cold water
-A few drops of strawberry flavouring + pink food colouring
-50g vegetable shortening, softened (Trex or Crisco)
-A dusting of more koh fun for rolling out
Method:
1) Make the cheesecake by whisking all the ingredients together with a balloon whisk pouring it into a greased pan and steaming it for 20 minutes or until firm.
2) Cool the cheesecake to room temperature, and pop in the fridge for four hours or overnight.
3) Roll the chilled cheesecake into small balls, being quick as the warmth of your hands will cause the mixture to soften a little. Cover and pop back in the fridge while you make the snow skin dough.
4) Stir all of the ingredients apart from the spare spoonful of flour in a bowl, switching from a wooden spoon to your hands when it starts to come together.
5) Tip the sticky dough onto a clean work surface and knead in the remaining spoonful of koh fun until smooth and no longer sticky (you may need a little more, but probably not less: after making the dough on a few trial runs it seems to be affected by the dampness of the air depending on the weather, believe it or not!)
6) Divide the dough into portions and roll them into balls just a little bigger than the cheesecake balls.
7) Retrieve your cheesecake balls. Take a snow skin dough ball and flatten it out on a clean surface dusted with a little flour to stop it from sticking. Pop a cheesecake ball in the middle, and cover it with the dough, pinching the ends carefully to seal it in.
8) Pack this ball into one of your moulds firmly, and either tap it back out, push it out with the plunger or remove the top and push it out (depending on what type of mould you have).
That's it, your done! Have fun, and enjoy. I'll be back with more mooncakes soon...
The Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival's coming up, and I really wanted to try making mooncakes this year. I've never made any kind before- neither the Hong Kong ones that are the most well-known, nor the round flaky Teochew ones, nor snow skin mooncakes.
Snow skin mooncakes are so called because of the soft, chewy, mochi-like outer casing (white like snow before colouring and flavouring is added). The sticky rice 'skin' is made with koh fun (cooked/ fried glutinous rice flour). Since it's already cooked it's ready to eat, and doesn't need any further cooking.
Alas, I didn't manage to take very good photos as my camera's on the blink. Still, these are easy to make, and you get the general idea. The only slightly tricky bit is getting the texture of the snow skin dough right: soft and pliable without being sticky, but not too tough or it wouldn't mould properly.
The purple ones are uneven for two reasons: one, I didn't mash the purple sweet potatoes smoothly enough- and two, I didn't knead it into the dough thoroughly enough. The strawberry ones were flavoured and coloured with a few drops of strawberry flavouring, which was a lot easier to work with.
One thing to note is that the amount of cheesecake filling/ how big the balls need to be/ the amount of snow skin dough you use per mould will depend very much on the size of your mould. This will take a bit of trial and error: I'll give a visual of this with my next mooncake venture, for sure.
Anyway, let's try this!
Ingredient for Cheesecake Filling:
-200g cream cheese
-2 eggs
-75g caster sugar
-1tsp vanilla
Ingredients for Snow Skin Dough:
-130g koh fun flour
-And additional tbsp koh fun flour for kneading
-130g icing sugar
-130ml cold water
-A few drops of strawberry flavouring + pink food colouring
-50g vegetable shortening, softened (Trex or Crisco)
-A dusting of more koh fun for rolling out
Method:
1) Make the cheesecake by whisking all the ingredients together with a balloon whisk pouring it into a greased pan and steaming it for 20 minutes or until firm.
2) Cool the cheesecake to room temperature, and pop in the fridge for four hours or overnight.
3) Roll the chilled cheesecake into small balls, being quick as the warmth of your hands will cause the mixture to soften a little. Cover and pop back in the fridge while you make the snow skin dough.
4) Stir all of the ingredients apart from the spare spoonful of flour in a bowl, switching from a wooden spoon to your hands when it starts to come together.
5) Tip the sticky dough onto a clean work surface and knead in the remaining spoonful of koh fun until smooth and no longer sticky (you may need a little more, but probably not less: after making the dough on a few trial runs it seems to be affected by the dampness of the air depending on the weather, believe it or not!)
6) Divide the dough into portions and roll them into balls just a little bigger than the cheesecake balls.
7) Retrieve your cheesecake balls. Take a snow skin dough ball and flatten it out on a clean surface dusted with a little flour to stop it from sticking. Pop a cheesecake ball in the middle, and cover it with the dough, pinching the ends carefully to seal it in.
8) Pack this ball into one of your moulds firmly, and either tap it back out, push it out with the plunger or remove the top and push it out (depending on what type of mould you have).
That's it, your done! Have fun, and enjoy. I'll be back with more mooncakes soon...
Comments
Post a Comment