Spiral Yam Mooncakes

I promised myself I won't spend money to buy mooncakes this year. I broke it. I promised myself I won't bake mooncakes this year. I broke it. So what is it that I kept my promise about mooncakes? None. I bought snow skin mooncakes for my spouse from Kia Hiang when they came to my company for the corporate sales. It tasted pretty good though and it's cheaper than others. We finished it within two days. I baked the Spiral Yam Mooncakes. I've tried Jo's recipe since two years ago, and I found the details really easy to understand and follow. This year is no exception.

The only exception this year was, I made the yam paste from scratch. You can say I have lots of time, or nothing better to do. I think I agree with either one of these. Being naive, I thought it would be easy to make the yam from scratch. However, it wasn't as easy as I thought.

Here's sharing with you exactly how I made. The steps are extracted directly from Jo's Deli. You can hop by to view her step by step pictures.

Spiral Yam Mooncakes, modified to my version.
Makes 32 mini (2" x 2") mooncakes

Ingredients:
Yam Paste:
960g Steamed and mashed yam
130g Sugar
150g Shallot oil
1/4 tsp Salt
30g Melon seeds, toasted

Water dough @ 100g:
460g Plain flour
56g Icing sugar
150g Rice bran oil
140g Water

Oil dough @ 67g:
350g Top flour
186g Shortening
1 tsp Violet colouring

Method:
To make yam paste:
1. Place mashed yam in a wok. Add salt, sugar and oil gradually into yam paste, a small portion at a time. Keep stirring at all times. Cook until the paste leaves the sides of the wok clean when stirred. Set aside to cool.

Weigh the yam paste:
2. Measure approximately 33-34g of the cooled yam paste. You should have 32pcs. Add approximately 10 melon seeds to each roll and mix well. Roll into a ball.

To prepare water dough:
3. Sift flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and gradually pour in the corn oil and water. Mix well and lightly knead for about one minute until a non-sticky dough is formed. Leave the dough aside and go on to prepare oil dough.

To prepare oil dough:
4. Sift flour into another mixing bowl. Mix shortening with flour well. Add violet colouring. Do not knead this dough.

To make the mooncakes:
5. Divide water and oil dough into 8 portions. Each water dough should weigh 100g while each oil dough should weigh 67g.

6. Roll out a water dough. Wrap an oil dough with this water dough to form a ball.

7. Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough in Step 6. Roll as swiss-roll. Give the dough a quarter turn and roll out the dough length wise again. Roll as swiss-roll again. Divide it into 4 equal portions.

8. Repeat the same procedure for the remaining water and oil doughs. These pastry skins are ready to be used.

9. With the cut side face down, roll out the dough such that the edges are thinner than the centre. Wrap yam paste ball and seal the edges. Repeat the above steps to the remaining mooncakes.

10. Place mooncakes on a baking tray. Bake in a preheated fan oven at 160C for 20 mins at the centre rack. Then placed it in the lowest rack and bake for a further 10mins. 

11. Transfer mooncakes to a wire rack and let cool.

Notes:
~ I didn't add a lot of sugar. The yam paste tasted a little sweet only. It tasted a lot more like yam than "sweetness". Get what I mean?
~ I measure out the yam paste then add in the melon seeds.
~ I realised that when I floured my worktop, the dough became very dry when I rolled them out. Since they don't stick to the worktop, I prefer not to flour them.
~ My violet colouring wasn't evenly mixed in the oil dough. I should have omitted the colourings.
~ I realised that my mooncake base was very thick and didn't cook thoroughly. So I put them back into the oven at the lowest rack to bake again.

Somehow, I have problem wrapping up the yam paste with the rounded dough. I get folds or "bums" on my mooncake base. Can someone teach me how to wrap it nicely? It'll be very much appreciated. :)

Bakings on a Saturday

It's another Saturday again. Saturdays are usually quite busy for me. After breakfast, bring the kids to their Art lesson, while hubby and I go for our marketing. We used to go AMK Ave 10 to buy our weekly groceries. However, since last week, we have switched to Sheng Siong as they have live fish, and I found their range of vegetables are better. I buy whatever I need from there. Some are cheaper, some are not, so it'll offset one another somehow. Better than I have to travel to different places to get different items. :p

I decided to bake another batch of the flaky yam mooncakes, since the last batch wasn't that good. This time, it was much better & satisfactory.



I also prepared dinner tonight since we didn't go to my mum's place as they had other appointment. The roasted chicken turned black very fast as I marinated it with honey. The tilapia fish was 'live' when I bought it in the morning. It was really fresh & the meat was juicy even though I grilled it and looked dried out! The baked cheese potatoes was also nice! All were wiped out at the end of dinner! A good change from the usual meat-veggies-soup-rice meals!

Flaky Yam Mooncakes

Yummy yummy! This is my all time favourite-Flaky Yam Mooncakes with yolk!! Ever since I was introduced to Crown Prince's Yam mooncakes (about a decade ago??) I was hooked onto it. I don't used to like mooncakes when I was young. However, when there were mooncakes at home, I'd helped my mum to finish them bit by bit. Otherwise, none of my sisters like mooncakes. The pieces of mooncakes I took is like one-sixteenth size. I ate for the melon seeds only, and I don't take salted eggs. As we all knew, during the 80s, there were only the normal lotus paste, with or without salted eggs. That limited variety!

Times have changed. There are so many varieties now we're really VERY spoilt for choice. There are the alcoholic, fruits, food etc etc. Still thinking if I should buy mooncakes this year since I've started baking. No traditional baked mooncakes for me, although I like baked green tea mooncakes too!

These flaky yam mooncakes are my proudest bake for these two days' mooncakes! :)

This recipe is extracted from Jo's Deli. Her step by step guide is very good for first timer. Follow it closely and the results will be as good as hers! Good luck for those who wants to try! :)