INTRODUCTION

First of all, I would like to apologize for not sharing recipes for such a long time. Thanks for being still with me and during these 1.5 years, I was busy doing some home baking for my Singaporean supporters. In fact, most of the goodies that I sold were prepared from the recipes in this blog. i blogged, I practised and I sold the products. I usually started the preparation by referring to my blog  and amended along the way for home baking purposes.

I have sold this snack twice. Once in August 2018 and another batch in June 2019. Each batch was about 100 pieces. Since I sensed that this trend will hit Singapore and Malaysia soon,   I have therefore decided to share the recipe so that more of you can benefit from this recipe.

Apparently the Cantonese baked mooncake are not common in the Taiwanese mooncake scene. Their more traditional mooncake is Taiwanese Traditional Mung Meat Minced Meat Moon Cake (台湾古早味月饼：绿豆椪） using Chinese flaky pastry.

In current years, this snack seems to evolve and become the festival iconic snack in Taiwan. Asked any younger Taiwanese, they will tell you the festival is not complete without  eating Dan Huang Su. In the previous two years, I have also seen supermarket in Singapore started selling and home bakers were selling Dan Huang Su too .

In essence Dan Huang Su is a festival snack that have a salted egg yolk wrapped by some red bean paste as the filling. The crust is Chinese pastry like the Teochew Mooncake or the Suzhou meaty mooncake. It is a small snack that usually weighs about 70-80 grams only. The attractiveness it is not sweet (since so little red bean paste is used), slightly salty because of the salted egg yolk and the flaky pastry. A good Dan Huang Su shall be well baked to perfect crispiness.

Traditionally lard is used but there are also many alternatives such as ghee, butter, shortening, cooking oil and etc.. The difference is the aroma and the crispiness.  Lard and vegetable shortening yields crispier pastry.

Personally, I used lard for all my Chinese pastry and I find it to be crispiest. In addition, the aroma is the best . I have also used butter and ghee before, personally as an old fashion blogger, I found the aroma is not something I am looking for . Having said that,  though this recipe uses lard, you can use any of the above mentioned fats.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings: About 32 pieces

Water Dough

• 400 grams of plain flour or medium protein flour
• 160 grams of lard or ghee or vegetable shortening or peanut oil
• 170 grams or ml of cold water
• 50 grams of icing sugar

Oil Dough

• 300 grams of cake flour or low protein flour
• 140 grams or ml of lard or ghee or vegetable shortening or peanut oil

Fillings:

• 32 pieces of salted egg yolk
• 800 grams of red bean paste

Decoration

• a tablespoon of black sesame seeds
• one egg yolk add 2 drops of water, beat until well combined and sieved

STEPS OF PREPARATION

• Baked the salted egg yolks at 150 degree Celsius for 10 minutes. The salted egg yolks need not to be fully cooked as it will continue to be cooked during the baking.  Depending on your salted egg yolk, if you are afraid that the salted egg yolks are too dry, you can soak the salted egg yolk in cooking oil for one night before the baking. This will enhance the “moisture content” of the egg yolk. Let it cooled completely before proceed to the next step.

• Divide the red bean pastes into 32 equal portion with about 25 grams each.

• Once the salted egg yolks are completely cooled, take a portion of the red bean paste and wrap around the salted egg yolk. Set aside.

• Put the plain flour, lard and icing sugar in a mixing bowl. Add the cold water and use a pair of chopsticks to stir until it forms a sticky dough. Lightly transfer to a floured surface and knead until it forms a smooth dough. Put it back to the mixing bowl, cover with a clingy wrap and let it rest for at least 20 minutes.

• For the oil dough, add the lard to the flour and lightly knead until it forms a dough. The dough can be slightly sticky but do not worry.

• Pre-heat the oven to 180 degree Celsius.

• Divide the water dough into 32 equal pieces, shape round and set aside

• Divide the oil dough into 32 equal pieces, shape round and set aside.

• Lightly pressed down the water dough, put a ball of oil dough at the centre.

• Seal the oil dough with the water dough, shape round again, cover with clingy wrap, set aside and let it rest for at least 10 minutes.

• Take a ball, use a rolling pin to roll the ball  as evenly and as thin as possible. Roll it up like you are preparing Swiss roll. Turn the “Swiss roll” direction with the shorter side pointing at you. Use a rolling pin to roll it again in a rectangular shape as evenly and as thin as possible. Roll it up again like you are preparing Swiss roll. Cover all the rough dough with a clingy wrap.

• Take a rolled dough, use the rolling pin to flatten it into a circle shape. Put a red bean paste ball on top of the rolled dough, seal the edges, shape it round . Transfer to the baking tray.

• Bake in the pre-heated oven of 180 degree Celsius for 20 minutes.

• After 20 minutes, take it out and egg wash the pastry and sprinkle some black sesame seeds on top of the egg wash.

• Send back to the oven and bake for another 15 minutes or until the pastry is hard and crispy.

• Best to eat as fresh as possible (experience showed that the first 3 day is the most delicious)and it should be stored in an airtight container. If you want to find specific container for this pastry, you can easily get it from Taobao.

CONCLUSION

If you know mandarin, there is no need to use my recipe as there are tons of mandarin recipe in the internet as this is a hot topic. However, if you are not able to understand mandarin, possibly my  recipe will be of help to you . Having said that, previously when I am issuing recipe, I have only prepared once or twice for purposes of issuing recipe. After 2 years of intensive home baking, I can tell you that what I have shared now in the recipe are generally more cautious and accurate.

Do give it a try and let me know if this recipe suits you . Well, it is definitely a very trendy bake if you decided to give this as festival gifts to your love ones.

Lastly making mooncake is a matter of practise. The recipe is there, what you need is the practise. You need to do more to make  yourself more efficient and each batch will improve and look better than the previous batch. Please take note that the pictures posted here are various batches for your reference only.

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