Slotting this post in while waiting for episode 13 of Heroes to load. Yeah well, I'm only watching it like NOW when season 2 is releasing soon. I say, better late than never. :)

Ingredients for snowskin

150g commercial koh flour
130g icing sugar
50g shorterning
50ml milk
180ml iced water

Ingredients for custard filling

1 egg yolk
100g caster sugar
20g superfine flour
20g cornflour
15g custard powder
50ml coconut milk
75ml milk
drops of yellow colouring
25g melted butter

300g Green Tea lotus paste

Method to make filling

• Mix all ingredients for custard together in a bowl except for butter.
• When its combined well, stir in butter. Steam for 15 minutes or till cooked.
• Mix the custard and pass through a sieve. Cool filling and scale at 15g each like the first pic below
• Scale green tea lotus paste filling at 15g each. Shape into rough round.
• Flatten green tea lotus paste, wrap in the custard balls and seal. Shape them again into rounds and set aside, like the 2nd pic below.

Method

• To make snowskin, sift dry ingredients (flour and icing sugar) into a bowl. Add in the rest of ingredients and combine well. Scale at 25g per portion, shape into rounds.
• Flatten the snowskin, wrap in the green tea custard balls and seal properly. Repeat process with remaining ingredients.
• Place into a mould dusted with koh flour, press firmly. Dislodge imprinted mooncake from mould.
• Chill in fridge for at least 20 minutes before serving. Advisable, for 1 hour.

Note: This recipe caters for moulds that can hold 55 g. If you have a bigger mould, adjust the ratio of 40% skin weight, 20% custard filling and 40% lotus paste filling. This recipe makes about 19 mini mooncakes.

I really love the colour combination of this mooncake. I love how the emerald-jade green of the filling matches with the bold yellow custard filling (which by the way, looks like the yolk), all encrusted in a modest shade of white. Tastes amazing too !! Fairly sweet, slight egg-y with a touch of green tea.

Ok, I swear the next post wouldn't be about mooncakes :P

PS: The koh flour I'm talking about is fried/cooked glutinous rice flour. Hopefully it can be found in large asian stores in non-Asian countries. I found them in Tai Kee Supermarket when I was in Sydney. (well, that is if any readers from Sydney wants to know) Cheers

So this year back home, things are easier as it's WAY WAY WAY easier to get ready-made pastes for the mooncake. I mean, you get stuffs like dragonfruit, mushroom, tomato and even cincau (grass jelly). Dude, I'm not kidding. Really. I've seen even ready mixed snowskin mix packages. So making mooncakes at home, really, isn't anything hard. Plus! there are even boxes to pack homemade mooncakes and send them out as gifts. Oh how clever!

Too much mumble. tsk. Lets start

Ingredients for snowskin

75g commercial koh flour (can be found in local baking ingredients store)
100g icing sugar
25g shorterning
few drops of pandan essence
few drops of green colouring
100ml iced water

Filling
Lotus seed paste (or any paste of your choice)
Roasted melon seeds

Method

• Sift koh flour and icing sugar into a mixing bowl
• Mix in pandan essence and green colouring with water
• Add all ingredients into the mixng bowl and combine into a soft dough.
• Scale at 25g each. Shape into round balls and keep aside.
• Combine fillings and scale them into 30g round balls. Say if you have 12 balls of snowskin. You need 12 x 30g paste + melon seeds. Get ?

• Sprinkle some koh flour onto surface, roll flat but make sure it's not too thin or else you'll get uneven amount of snowskin and filling.
• Wrap in the paste and slowly round it. It's sorta like making pau. Try to seal the ends.
• Roll into a ball and push into mooncake mould that's dusted with some koh flour.
• Press in lightly to form the shape. Knock out the imprinted mooncake.
• And you have your mooncake! Chill in fridge for at least 20 minutes before serving.

Note: The weight of snowskin and filling depends on which mould you use. Try to stick to a ratio of 40% skin weight and 60% filling weight, more or less.

Tada !! see, it's just very easy to make!! Althout I would say, moulding the shapes would be the hardest cause sometimes the skin is too thin or thick. Or the surface is not smooth enough, or this that this that. But lotsa practice would be suffice. There's no magic to those people behind the windows making siu long paus like machines because thats what they do the whole day!!  and everyday!

This cake was done weeks ago, and I'm only getting it posted now. Well, you see, I'm on my holidays now, so I don't feel the hurry to post up everything before the next class starts. So, just saving abit at a time.

Well, I was rather disappointed at how this class was conducted. Infact, very! It wasn't organized properly, food orders didn't came in right, I was pissed off by the Chef at the end of the class, and my joconde/tuile paste turned out to be a meringue. How funny is that. But things happen in the kitchen.

An idea of how it may look like (my friend's gateau)

My gateau turned out looking bad, cause 1 : Raspberry mousse mixture was insufficient, cause the chef told us to make 1 recipe and share among 2 students cause it would be enough, but at the end, it was NOT! So, I had to give my friend some, which made mine, pretty insufficient to be considered as a mousse cake. Then, we had to wait for food order for raspberry puree cause the damn school threw away 13kgs of raspberry puree the day before. Oh, no, wait, that was the week before. Haha Anyway, lets not talk about how they handle our money. Back to the raspberry mousse. So, then the chef suggested that we make white chocolate ganache to fill up our gateau. Ok, and so he did. But it was screwed, I mean, almost. WE still used it anyway to finish up our product (It's not THAT bad, still usable) And then the glaze part. my. my. my. I really felt like killing the chef for wasting my time. He did some awful decorating on TOP of MY cake, and when he turned and look at me and asked "you dont like it?" I said "NO". Then he said "I'm just kidding, any decorating on top of the glaze, you can scrap it out" Ok. thank you for wasting my time. And now I have to redo my glaze. Thank you very much

But seriously, if done properly, it would have been a pretty interesting cake.

So mine had 5 layers. Joconde Sponge base, raspberry mousse (made with raspberry puree, gelatine and whipped cream), accidental "meringue layer", white chocolate ganache and flan gel glaze. And yes, the gateau can be improved (Or perhaps a more organized method of teaching)

will be back.. .

soon

this dessert here tastes absolutely wonderful (maybe because of the Grand Marnier) haha a couple of us has became alcos in the class, for instance, today.. we, ahem. Well, we made some lemonade cause there's lemon like a bagful, so, Chef asked us to prepare some cause the weather was so freaking hot!! And, then we made some! while drinking, we spotted some Kirsch. Haha, and we added kirsch into our lemonade which was really good ! Kirsch + lemonade. aha! and so, we kept drinking and drinking and drinking. Hey, its free boost, what do u expect !

Anyway, back to this dessert.

For a baked souffle, there's usually heights above the ramekin because of the aeration of egg whites. In this chilled souffle, it's the aeration of egg yolks. We whiped 125g egg yolks with zest of 1/2 orange and 150ml stock syrup over a bain marie (like making Sabayon) and trust me, this really is some good arms exercise. Haha. Whip it to a stiff stage but obviously not coagulated. Then add 45ml of Grand Marnier and 275ml medium-stiff peak whipped cream. Then line the sides of the ramekins / containers with silicone sheets. Pour in some of the mixture and freeze it. It should make quite a couple of it.

Dust with cocoa powder and garnish with orange segments and strawberries. As you wish :)

I think I like Sabayon. Haha, even though it's a pain to whisk it up. With some orange zest, it's really orange-y. And Grand Marnier works really well with orange. So flavour wise, it's thumbs up :D

Uh, it looks pretty weird. haha But I 'did' get compliments on piping. (oh well, then my piping was probably bad last time, hahahaha) Bombe Alaska is ice cream encased in sponge sheet (like the shape of a bowl) then covered with italian meringue and then browned quickly in a very hot oven, or blowtorch

We made quite a variety of ice creams during that week - vanilla, hazelnut, chocolate and mango and for sorbet, we had raspberry and orange. Fyi, my freezer is jam-packd with boxes of ice cream that seems never ending! I don't even, ok maybe I do, but just minor spaces for my chickens!  boo hoo

Seriously, I dont know what to talk about this Bombe. The layers in the bombe are, sponge sheet (thats shaped like a bowl, then vanilla ice cream, then meringue case, then some hazelnut icecream, then meringue. Then ice cream again, vanilla and hazelnut, and lastly, closed with a layer of sponge sheet. IT's then kept in the freezer so, when we take out to put pipe meringue on it, it doesnt melt all over the place.

and.... a doomed photo...

like seriously, i don't like wearing caps... or hats.. *ppfffF*

Anyway, let's get back to the lovely desserts.  First it was baked desserts, then it was chilled, now... ah, how can we ever forget about.... chocolates !!! So let's bring em on!

Ok, maybe something not so chocolaty, totally unrelated :P

It's Cointreau Sabayon . Sabayon is a warm sauce thickened with egg yo0lks and traditionally flavoured ith Marsala (Zabaglione). Now this is some serious trick or treat to the biceps. Whisking over a bain marie for over 10 minutes so the egg yolks gets foamy and stiff. Like.. why wasn't there a mixing machine that's also a bain marie ?? hrm, that make sense don't it ?

Strawberries are then placed in a martini glass, and just fill it up with Sabayon. The detriments of this sauce is that, it doesn't stay stiff for long. It needs to be served immediately, and of course, eaten immediately :P

NExt..

ah.. yes! Chocolate mousse !! yummy. SEe I kid you not on the chocolate part.

Chocolate Mousse Recipe

150ml Cream
200g Dark couverture
10g gelatine
500ml whipped cream

Boil cream, add to chocolate, and soaked and drained gelatine as well, if using sheets. Stir till smooth. Leave it to room temperature, fold in semi-whipped cream. Pour into moulds and refrigerate. Voila!

And this was poured into a glass as well, decorated with whipped cream, strawberry and chocolate cigarette.

Another version.

This chocolate mousse that we made in class was actually added with some sabayon, but it can be omitted. Alcohol can be added to it :P  Which reminds me .. that I still have some chocolate liquer in my fridge !!!!!!

Next !!!!! *virtual drum roll*

Yum ! this is absolutely orgasmic!!!! I could easily eat all of it *burp* Just kidding, obviously i didn't have all of it..

Recipe

125g butter
125g dark couverture
3 eggs
75g caster sugar
35g plain flour
vanillla essence

Melt butter and couverture together. Beat eggs and sugar and mix to the chocolate-butter mixture. Add in flour as well. Butter and sugar ramekins and bake at 150 C at approximately 15 minutes. Becareful not to overbake it or else there won't be any sauce in it!

It's a self chocolate sauce pudding. some people call it.. molten cakes, and stuffs. Well, if the photo is not clear enough, it means, that there's chocolate sauce in the pudding.

That's it for the day ....

*hot cross buns ... one a penny two a penny hot cross bunssss*

presented in a slightly shallow plate-bowl with raspberry coulis

Panna Cotta translates from Italian to mean 'cooked cream. It is flavoured cream that has been cooked and set with gelatine.

Buttermilk Panna Cotta served on cupped-Tulip Paste with Creme Anglaise and some strawberries

Buttermilk Panna Cotta

100ml cream or milk
130g sugar
drops of vanilla essense
20g gelatine sheets (approximately 4)
600ml buttermilk
100ml semi whipped cream

Warm milk /cream with sugar and venilla. Take off heat and add soaked and drained gelatine. Strain the mixture and cool to room temperature. Add in buttermilk and fold in semi-whipped cream. Pour into moulds and chill. To remove, dip mould in hot water.

I'm not really a fan of buttermilk's taste, but yeah it was OK. I thought that a vanilla panna cotta with vanilla beans would be perfect.

Next, we made Bavarois which are also known as Bavarian Creams and are a type of dessert known as cold charlottes. They are made from 3 basic elements - custard sauce, gelatine and whipped cream. Accurate measuring of gelatine is important. Bavarois are like mousse but bavarois contains egg and mousse doesnt.

Raspberry Bavarois

250ml milk
65g egg yolks
100g sugar
15g gelatine sheets
200g raspeberry purree
500ml whipped cream

Soak gelatine in water. Boil milk to approx 90 C. Remove from heat, add already-mix egg yolks and sugar in and stir till well combined. Add in gelatine and raspberry purree. Cool to room temperature, then add in semi-whipped cream. Pour into moulds and chill

I liked this one better than the panna cotta. Maybe some berry-bits would be nicer. Raspberry can be substituted with any other fruits except pineapple. Just make a puree out from the fruit and add to the milk-egg mixture

In Malaysia, the variety of mooncakes is like HEAPS! there would be traditional ones like red bea or lotus paste, to very inovative stuffs like Whiskey truffle mooncake. Like, Whiskey + Truffle + mooncake. what a combo. For me, I did 2 types, one snow skin (which is also called ping pei in chinese - non baked) and a baked flaky crust mooncake.

Some history of this festival

this is the bird's nest custard filling snow skin mooncake. I got the recipe from Aunty Yochana. It's quite tedious for me as I have to go around looking for the different types of flour. Given that the huge Asian grocery stores here are quite complete, I still had some problem looking for some stuffs.

I did some minor modification to the custard filling and subsequently, oversteamed the filling. The skin was slightly too thick for my liking. Some of my friends liked it, some not of course. But yeah, this was an experience. Next time I'll just buy ready-made red bean paste and try again. Oh well, when my fridge is not overloaded with desserts, I'll think about making it. :P

Next, would be the flaky skin type of mooncake.

Baked Sweet potato and pumpkin mooncake. Recipe here. I thought that this was awesome and the filling was quite special. The colour looks like a normal mooncake. Hehe. The sweet potato had a sweet taste to it and pumpkin had an earthy-autumny kinda feel which would suit the occasion. It's actually quite similar to this Pandan Spiral Pastry which I made probably like early this year. I also mentioned in the post that for a nice cut of the mooncake, it should be cooled down before cutting it. Obviously I didn't listen to myself and cut it straight away to snap some pics. That's cause I was already rushing to go for class.

This was being cut at night. Obviously, it's been cooled down very well and has a nice clean cut.

And for the BBQ, we had quite an amountful of food! I came back late cause I had class till 9pm. But in a way, it was good cause I ddin't have to set up the fire. Haha. I AM always the one to start up the fire back in Malaysia when I organise any BBQ. and also, the one in charge of grilling.

We had chicken wings, spicy lamb satay, sliced pork, vietnamese sausages, fruit salad, vege salad, and ... 3 types of mooncake and 2 cakes. That sounds like a dessert party more than a BBQ. Haha. Btw, that's a tiramisu from David Jones.

What's next ?? hrm.. Mille Feulle, Good Living Grower's Market, Thai food, Fritters... gosh...