Homemade Five Kernels or Five Nuts Moon Cake Filling With Ham (金华五仁馅）

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Update on 8-7-2016

This year, I have decided to update the recipe to make another variants of five nuts with the addition of ham and candied pork belly. This is very traditional and the main amendments to the recipe are:

addition of ham (jinghua ham 金华火腿）preferred
addition of desiccated coconut (椰蓉）
addition of candied pork belly (冰肉，糖肉，晶肉）

INTRODUCTION

Five nuts or five kernel moon cake is a traditional Cantonese style of moon cake..I do not like this moon cake when i was young as it is too nutty and have some dried tangerine .. However, as I aged, I started to like this moon cake because of the nuts.. I think I may not be the one who is saying this. Facebook friends also said the same thing.

As per Wikipedia:

“Five kernel (五仁, wǔ rén): A filling consisting of 5 types of nuts and seeds, coarsely chopped, is held together with maltose syrup. Recipes differ from region to region, but commonly used nuts and seeds include: walnuts, pumpkin seeds, watermelon seeds,peanuts, sesame seeds, or almonds. In addition, the mixture will usually contain candied winter melon, jinhua ham, or pieces of rock sugar as additional flavoring.”

As for the nuts, I am unsure if there is any restrictions as I have tried and every brand have their unique combination of nuts. However, in Chinese literatures, the traditional 5 nuts usually used are peanuts, walnuts, sesame seeds, water melon seeds and almonds. These 5 nuts signify the 5 morale standard required by traditional Chinese teachings (Benevolence, righteousness, courtesy, wisdom and trust). For those who understand mandarin, Baike written that:

“五仁是中国传统糕点（如月饼等）的一种馅料，它是用花生仁、芝麻仁、核桃仁、杏仁、瓜子仁五种料炒熟后去皮压成碎丁，最后加入白糖调制而成。中国古代有“仁、义、礼、智、信”五样道德准则，而“五仁”正好与之谐音。” (source: http://baike.baidu.com/view/174761.htm)

In the good old days, ham or sugar lard cubes were included but this had been omitted in recent years and most shops only sold pure vegetarian version. This is a rather flexible recipe and prepared based on the nuts that I liked and readers can also chose 5 nuts that they prefer. I have used the filling to prepare the moon cake as in the post and the filling is consider as a successful attempt.

WHAT IS REQUIRED

Servings： About 550 grams of fillings (adequate to fill 4 big size moon cakes)

50 grams of walnuts or pecan nuts （核桃仁或胡桃仁）
50 grams of sunflower seeds or watermelon seeds （葵花子仁或西瓜子仁）
50 grams of white and black sesame seeds （黑白芝麻）
50 grams of chopped almonds （杏仁）
50 grams of candied winter melon （糖冬瓜）
20 grams of candied tangerine (桔饼）
5 grams of rose water or rose cooking liquor (玫瑰露或玫瑰水）
80 grams of icing sugar （糖粉）
25 ml of peanut oil or lard （花生油或猪油）
100 grams of gao fen or cooked glutinous rice flour (糕粉）
20 grams of maltose (麦芽糖）
50 grams of cold water (冷水）

For easier binding, you can add some red bean paste or mung bean paste. In such case, you can omit the 80 grams icing sugar.

For crust recipes and how to make mooncake, please refer to: Back To Basics–Baked Traditional Mooncake (传统粤式月饼）

Recipe 2 – Ham Five Nuts

50 grams of candied pork belly (冰肉，糖肉或晶肉）- see preparation below
50 grams of jinhua ham (金华火腿）， diced
40 grams of walnuts or pecan nuts （核桃仁或胡桃仁）
30 grams of sunflower seeds or watermelon seeds （葵花子仁或西瓜子仁）
40 grams of white and black sesame seeds （黑白芝麻）
30 grams of chopped almonds （杏仁）
30 grams of desiccated coconuts (椰蓉）
30 grams of candied winter melon （糖冬瓜）
20 grams of candied tangerine (桔饼）
20 grams of rose water or rose cooking liquor (玫瑰露或玫瑰水）
50 grams of icing sugar （糖粉）
20 ml of peanut oil or lard （花生油或猪油）
90 grams of gao fen or cooked glutinous rice flour (糕粉）
20 grams of maltose (麦芽糖）
30 grams of cold water (冷水）

Candied Pork Belly

100 grams of pork belly
Some wine with alcoholic content of more than 40%
25 grams of sugar

* You can always prepare more of the the above candied pork belly. It is a preserved item and can be keep very long in the fridge.

STEPS OF PREPARATION

For crust recipes and how to make mooncake, please refer to: Back To Basics–Baked Traditional Mooncake (传统粤式月饼）

Toast all the nuts separately in oven at 150 degrees for 5-10 minutes. Keep an eye as nuts can get burn rather easily. The step is optional if the nuts purchased is already toasted.

Put all the big nuts , dried tangerine and candied winter melon in a food processor, pause blend 2-3 times until smaller chunks. Add in all cooked glutinous rice flour or gao fen, sugar, maltose, water, rose water or rose liquor, lard or peanut oil. Blend until well combined. Transfer out to a big mixing bowl, put in all the seeds and nuts (chopped almonds, sesame seeds, sun flower seeds) , knead until it well combined. Divide into relevant sizes for moon cake moulding.

Note:

The step of blending is optional and you can always used knife to chop the nuts and use hand to mix the ingredients. I have resorted to using blended because of the harder dried tangerine and candied winter melon.

Recipe 2

Cook the pork belly in a pot of hot boiling water for about 5-10 minutes. Timing will depend on the thickness of the pork belly. Drain and let it cool. Once completely cooled, cut the cooked belly into 0.5mm – 1 mm cubes. Put adequate rice wine to cover it and about 50 grams of sugar. Marinate the cooked pork belly in the chiller for at least 24 hours. If it is too wet, just put everything in a hot wok, stir fry for a few minutes for the syrup to thicken. The meat will become transparent and once it cools, sugar will recrystallize.

CONCLUSION

Hope this post will benefit those readers who are looking for this traditional recipe. It is part of the moon cake filling series.

This recipe was included in Page 32-33 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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