Old School Of Mooncake With A New Look

NaraCheung 2018-07-09

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INTRODUCTION

I have a hard time of naming this old school of mooncake in English. In Mandarin, it was called Yun Pian Gao (云片糕 – Cloud Cake） or Xue Hua Gao (雪花糕 – Snow Cake）or Shu Ce Gao (书册糕 – Book Cake）…

Source: http://baike.baidu.com/view/114850.htm

Traditionally, these mooncakes are white in colour just like the snow or cloud in the sky. It is usually round like the moon or a rectangular shape. For the rectangular white colour cake, you can eat the cake by peeling cake piece by piece (like kuih lapis) and hence called a book cake..These cakes was usually offered to the moon and after offering to the Goddess of the Moon, Chang E (嫦娥）, some dialects believed that eating the book cake will help the students to get good results in the examinations..

I asked Google to translate the name of the cake.. It was translated as Chinese wafer.. possibly because of the ability to tear the cake pieces by pieces…I found that it a rather funny name and I have decided to name this as a “snow cake” even though the colour does not look like snowy white..

The colour is not white because there are some changes to the original recipe. I swore that I never like this cake before when I was young. It was sandy and the taste is very monotonous , a piece of cooked glutinous rice flour..

Since this is a mooncake but not my piece of cake, I have decided to look for a “improvised” version of the cake.. I stumbled across this recipe and I am please with the role of orange peels and sesame seeds. The orange peel have completely masked the raw “Gao Fen or cooked glutinous rice flour “ taste and the sesame seed have give the monotonous floury texture of the cake something to bite.. Unsure as to the reason, possibly because of the peanut oil, the cake is not as dry as the traditional cake and hence melt in the mouth.

After I took my first bite, it completely changed my perception of the cake, the cake taste entirely different from the traditional version. In addition, I am happy that my kids love this cake and I am very doubtful if they will like the original white colour floury cake.

This cake is very easy to prepare and as long as you have a mooncake or other mould, you can prepare the cake. If you want the traditional white colour cake, you just need to use the cooked glutinous rice flour, icing sugar, white colour sugar syrup and vegetable shortening.. It will a snowy white cake. If you put in a rectangular mould, you can easily cut it into neat pieces.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Recipe adapted from: 雲片糕（雪花糕）

250 grams of Gao Fen or Cooked Glutinous Rice Flour
~~150~~ 120 grams of icing sugar
3 tablespoons of orange peels
3-4 tablespoons of roasted sesame seeds
~~100~~ 50 grams of golden syrup
~~120~~ 80 grams of peanut oil

Others

Mooncake mould of your choice

Recipe 2 – traditional recipe

250 grams of Gao Fen or Cooked Glutinous Rice Flour
120 grams of icing sugar
60 grams of cold water
80 grams of vegetable shortening

STEPS OF PREPARATION

Pre-heat a steamer with hot boiling water.

Put all the dry ingredients (Gao Fen, icing sugar, orange peels and roasted sesame seeds) in a big mixing bowl, stir until well mixed. Make a well in the centre, pour the wet ingredients (peanut oil and golden syrup), knead until it form a crumbly doughy liked texture.

Take a moon cake mould, transfer the mixed ingredients into the mould, pressed firmly into the mould following the shape of the mould. Dislodge the cake and placed on a piece of paper and placed on a steamer tray. Heat the water until boiling, transfer the steamer tray to the steamer, OFF THE HEAT, and let it sit in the steamer (full of steam) for about 3-5 minutes. (note that you are not steaming the cake, you are using the steam to incorporate some water vapour into the cake to enhance binding of the cake)

Transfer out and place on a piece of oil absorbing paper. Don’t worry about the oil or if the cake is too soft. The oil will continue to drip into the paper and when placed in a cooling place, it will start to get drier and the texture will be slightly harder. You can also eat it immediately when it is out of the steamer.

CONCLUSION

When you are preparing the snow skin mooncake, I presumed you will have a lot of Gao Fen left since the commercial packing is rather big. Therefore, you can try to prepare this cake as another type of mooncake. Rest be assured that the taste of this recipe is totally different from the traditional white colour floury cake…and I presumed again, your family members will love this cake.

This recipe was included in Page 28-29 of the “Easy Mooncake Recipes E-book”. For more mooncake recipes, you can have a copy of “Easy mooncake recipes – A step by step guide” that was packed with 20 recipes, 45 pages at a reasonable convenience fee of USD4.00. The recipes covered various recipes from durian mooncake, traditional baked mooncake and also the less common Teochew mooncake . You can purchase by clicking the link above.You can either pay using Pay Pal or Credit card account. Please ensure that you have an PDF reader like Acrobat or iBooks in your mobile phone or iPad if you intended to read it in your ipad or mobile phone. Should there be any problems of purchasing, feel free to contact me at kengls@singnet.com.sg and separate arrangement can be made.

Hope you like the post today. Cheers and have a nice day.

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