My homemade moon cake from my first attempt

I cannot believe how simple I can make this at home. Making Bing Pi Moon cake is so easy nowadays since we can always use the premix. A bit of kneading to do though (and with shortening, it is a bit quite oily and messy).

Ingredients you can get from bakery supply shops are:

• 1 pack Mooncake premix @ Rm8.80 (I used brand: BAKER’S ONE)
• 1 pack White Lotus filling @ RM29.90 (I used brand: HOY KEE)
• 70g shortening
• Some ice water
• Flavouring – fresh squeezed Pandan Juice
• Flavouring – mashed dragon fruit (you can see biji-biji on them)
• Mould – Plastic Bing Pi Mould (most easiest to use)
• Mickey Mouse cookie cutters

Method to make Bing Pi dough (instruction on the package itself)

1. First you need to add the shortening and ice water to the premix
2. Knead till you feel its elastic
3. Cover and let it rest in fridge for at least 30mins

As for the filling-roll them into balls.

First time I bought White Lotus. Very expensive but this brand is very good because it is not sweet at all.

Cheaper options will be red beans / lotus paste if you just wanna play with it. You can even use any paste you like or make your own paste if you have the time.

How to shape the mooncake

1. Divide ready cold dough into balls. Press them flat.
2. Wrap the filling with your dough.
3. Shape them into balls before putting them carefully into your mould.
4. Press them out (if you use mooncake mould) or carefully remove it from the cookie cutter after you stamp the face

Many recipes you see on book call to measure the dough (about 60% dough, 40% filling) but I did not measure them because my mould sizes vary. Just agak-agak.

My perfectly shaped moon cake

The experience was really amazing. Never I though I would be able to make my own moon cake as pretty and perfect as above. We did not get it right when we tried it initially, but since the dough is so flexible, we can always reshape it into a ball (try your best to keep the filling inside) and try to stamp print again.

My Mickey and Minnie Bing Pi Moon cake

If you are using cookie cutters like this, it is really not that easy because the filling would run out when you need to shape some parts to Mickey’s ears. However, if you do not get it right for the first time, you can always roll it back into balls and slowly reshape them into the mould again.

Though the ingredients are quite pricey, still it is cheaper to make your own  because you get more and can give away these beautiful moon cake as gifts to your friends.

*Si-beh shiok* Macam playing play-doh with your kids eh!

Ingredients late MIL use would be:

• Sengkuang (Jicama), shredded
• Carrots, shredded
• Cucumber (for garnishing), shredded
• Tau fu pok, finely cut
• Fish cake, finely cut
• Minced meat, marinated with some oyster sauce
• Shallots, finely chopped/shredded
• Garlic., finely chopped
• Dried shrimp, pounded
• Soy sauce
• Salt, sugar and pepper to taste

Method:

Saute basic ingredients, then add on all the vegetables. Cook and leave to simmer (occasionally stirring) over the fire till soft.

And because this dish was usually prepared to replace our meal, and since there will be so many of us eating, late MIL had to make a BIG kuali. Of course SIL would help out because it is really tedious to prepare the ingredients.

My first attempt of Ju Hu Char

When Siew Pheng told me about this Ju Hu Char dish she makes, I suspect it was almost the same as MIL’s popiah.  Cooking this dish is not difficult for me because I am so used to cook late MIL’s popiah. The only difference is that Ju Hu Char has shredded dry cuttlefish added. Siew Pheng also suggested to add one finely cut soaked dried mushroom.

Ju Hu Char – my dinner tonight

The only difference is that we usually eat our Hokkien Popiah with the normal Popiah Skin from the wet market ( I still could not find any good one from here) or the frozen ones whereas Siew Pheng suggested eating this with fresh lettuce or ‘Sang-Choy’.

Ju Hu Char with some gravy for rice

Hubby love the crispiness of the lettuce going together with this dish. However I feel the taste a bit bland when this dish goes with lettuce. Still prefers to eat this like this or with the popiah skin (with some sweet black sauce or cili sauce)!

This cream filling taste great when it goes with cream puffs.

Ingredients:

• 100g castor sugar
• 2Tbsp flour
• 2Tbsp corn flour
• 3 egg yolks
• 400ml milk (I used UHT milk)
• 1Tbsp butter
• 1 tspt vanilla essence

Method:

1. Combine sugar, flour and egg yolk with 2 Tbsp milk into a paste
2. Warm remaining milk and pour into the paste
3. Stir over low fire until it turns into a custard
4. Removed from fire
5. Add butter and vanilla essence
6. Once cool, keep in fridge

Points to remember

My cream filling becomes a little bit dry. Maybe I overcook the batter or I used too much flour. However it still taste fantastic. When it is ready and left to cool, it should be covered so that the exposed top layer of the custard would not harden. See how much I can do with my new oven that I got from the great sale.