I was in bay area last weekend and needed to find something zen and therapeutic to do on a quiet Sunday. There is nothing more fun than a mooncake making session with my very talented niece who invented this blackberry lotus see filling. We had a great Sunday afternoon and the mooncakes are awfully good!

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Guest post below from my niece Syn Wee. Mooncake skin recipe and assembly instructions adapted from ricenflour.

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With the husband and dog gone, it’s Aunt and niece time. Aunt prefers brown skinned mooncakes instead of the snow varieties, so the duo decided to make special ones with black berry flavored filling. Unfortunately, there isn’t any berry filling recipes online that are firm enough for use in a mooncake, so the duo invented one. 

Mooncake Skin

• 120g cake flour
• 120g all purpose flour
• 160g golden syrup, I bought Lyle’s Golden Syrup from the store
• 30g peanut oil
• 1 egg yolk
• 10g creamy peanut butter

Directions

1. Sieve the flour into a mixing bowl.
2. Make a well in the middle of the bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients into the well.
3. Using a spatula, fold the flour into the wet mixture until all the ingredients are incorporated.
4. Knead the ingredients into a dough using the heel of your palm. Wear a nitrile glove if you prefer. If dough is too dry, add more oil and knead until dough is pliable and smooth.
5. Cover with cling wrap and leave it to rest at room temperature while preparing the filling.

Black Berry Jam

• 2 cups black berries
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup water, divided
• 1 teaspoons lemon juice
• 1 tablespoons cornstarch

Directions

1. Combine black berries, sugar, 1/4 cup water, and lemon juice in a saucepan; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until reduced, 15 to 20 minutes. Remove saucepan from heat and strain through a fine-mesh strainer into a bowl. Pour mixture back into the saucepan.
2. Mix remaining water and cornstarch together in a bowl until dissolved; add to berry mixture. Bring mixture to a boil; cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened, about 5 minutes. Cool filling in refrigerator, at least 30 minutes.

Black Berry Lotus Seed Filling

• 250g white lotus seed
• 180g fine sugar
• 70g maltose syrup
• 140g corn oil
• 2 cups black berry jam

Directions

1. Soak the lotus seeds with water in a bowl until soft, generally overnight.
2. Remove the green lotus core.
3. If using a pressure cooker, put just enough water to cover the lotus seeds and cook for 20 minutes; otherwise if using a regular pot, put just enough water to cover the lotus seeds and 1/2 a cup more water and cook for 45 minutes.
4. Using a hand blender or a regular blender, blend the cooked lotus seeds together with the black berry jam.
5. Pour the oil, sugar, maltose syrup and lotus seed paste into preferably a non-stick pan. Stir-fry the lotus seeds paste until it completely mixes together and hard to separate. Around 30 minutes.
6. Take 1/4 cup of the paste and leave it out to cool on a plate for 30 seconds. If the cooled paste can be easily rolled into ball, you are done cooking, otherwise, repeat step 6 for another 10 minutes to firm up the paste.

Assembly

1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.
2. With the mold that I have, we experimented and find that a ratio of 50g mookcake skin to 90g blackberry lotus seed paste works best.
3. Weigh and divide the dough into 50g portions. Roll each portion into a ball. With the recipe in this post, we can make 8 mooncakes.
4. Weigh and divide the lotus seed paste into 90g portions. We need only 8 portions, roll each portion into a ball. Save any remaining filling for snacking, they taste really, really good.
5. Lightly brush the mold with oil.
6. Flatten each dough ball with your palm and roll it out into a circular disc on a lightly floured surface. The size of the dough disc should be about twice the size of the filling.
7. Place a dough disc over a ball of filling. Gently wrap the dough around the filling, ensuring that you do not trap air between the filling and the dough. Seal the filling with the dough disc.
8. Place the sealed filling smooth-side down into the mold. Press and smooth until the filling is level with the edge of the mold. Flip over and release the mooncake.
9. Repeat steps 5-7 until all 8 mooncakes are done.
10. Arrange the 8 mooncakes on a baking tray lined with parchment paper. Bake in the 375 degrees oven for 10 minutes.
11. While mooncake is baking, prepare the egg wash. Beat one egg yolk and 1/2 egg white with 2 tsp milk and 1 tsp sesame oil and 1/2 tsp golden syrup.
12. Remove the mooncakes from the oven after 10 minutes.
13. Lightly brush each mooncake with water. Let is cool for 5 minutes.
14. Brush the face of each mooncake with the egg wash with a fine brush, making sure that you don’t leave excess egg wash in between the grooves of the pattern.
15. Bake in the 375 degrees oven for 8 minutes.
16. Remove from the oven, repeat steps 12 to 15 for another 2 times until the mooncake is golden brown. Adjust the baking time each round to get the desired browning on the mooncakes.