(Update: If you’re looking for the Traditional Baked Mooncake Recipe, click here.)
Just in time for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, a special moon cake recipe that will make your head spin.
I have a friend here in Kuching who loves to garden. And since she lives next to an empty plot of land, she has put it to good use by cultivating it. When she mentioned that she grew purple sweet potatoes, I was hopeful that they were Okinawan sweet potatoes. I had to ask her if I could come by her house to help her harvest some.
Turns out she got really busy the weekend that we were going but she did dig up some to give to me. The ones she gave me were purple mixed with white and they were dry in texture. In some ways they reminded me of taro (yams) but a little sweeter. And later I found out that they were known as taro sweet potatoes. Well…that explains it…
Despite their dryness (or maybe because of it), I had the idea that I would boil them, mash them and then add some butter, milk and sugar and make them into a paste and use them as a filling for this pastry. After all, during the Mooncake festival, we find Shanghai mooncakes filled with taro which are very similar in size and shape to these pastries.
