The whole point about the Jellyriffic “Get Your Jelly On” challenge is to come up with 30 days’ worth of creative uses for the jelly mould. Over the past week, we’ve done lots of jellies like Dragonfruit Agar-Agar, “Michael Jackson” Agar-Agar, Sirap Selasih Konnyaku, and White Coffee Konnyaku. All interesting jelly recipes, to be sure. But we’ve not really begun thinking “outside the cone” until now.
Annie’s been wanting to try making doughnuts, even though she’s not much in to deep frying. This challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity for us to try something we’ve never done before (same like the Easy Chicken Terrine recipe we did the other day). She found a doughnut recipe that looked easy and decided to make it this weekend.
This is the recipe for the traditional, baked Chinese Mooncake that is typically eaten during the Mid-Autumn Festival. The mooncake filling consists of a salted egg yolk, surrounded by sweet lotus seed paste, which is wrapped in a thin, tender skin and then pressed into a round or square mold to impart a design onto the skin. The cake is partially baked, brushed with an egg wash, and then finished in the oven.
Last year, I got into making snowskin mooncakes and pandan spiral mooncakes for the Mooncake Festival. (The pandan spiral mooncakes are seriously awesome; I already have orders for more.) However this year, I decided that I had to try my hands with the traditional baked mooncakes. After making three batches of these mooncakes recently, I can say that they’re pretty simple to make, and they come out as good as or even better than store-bought.
I’m not a big fan of baking cookies. *Gasp!* Is that horrible to say?
As a baker, I’ve always enjoyed baking cakes more. I like that I just have to mix together my batter, pour into a pan, stick it into the oven and forget about it till it’s done. While waiting, I get to clean up my mess and when the cake comes out, I just have to wait a while, and I can cut into a large slice. Make myself some tea, and voila, I’ve got a tea-time snack all ready to go.
