Spiral Moon Cake

Am here with another interesting dessert from china . So happy to be apart of IFC ( International food challenge) an group evoled by +Saraswathi Tharagaram (author of saras yummy bites )  and +Shobana Sekar (author of Kitchen secrets and snippets ).  I liked the thought of trying and tasting more international recipes and learning a lot about foods in other parts of the world .So here we are with our first challenge 
This is our first challenge this month covering the chinese  or Cantonese cuisine this month.

Cantonese Cuisine, also named Yue Cuisine or Guangdong cuisine, is one of the main cuisine styles in China. It comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and it is one of among the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.

The basic cooking techniques of Cantonese cuisine include roasting, stir-frying, sauteing  deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Steaming and stir-frying are most commonly used to preserve the ingredients’ natural flavors. The most characteristic cooking methods of Cantonese Cuisine are cooking in salt, cooking in wine, baking in a pan, and soft ¨C frying.

Servings :To make 8 medium sized moon cake.

Yield: 10 moon cakes

(Adapated from House of annie )

Ingredients

300 g sweet potatoes (purple ones preferable)—start with about 400-500 g sweet potatoes unpeeled.
 1/4 cup milk powder
1 tbsp ghee or butter
 1/4-1/2 cup sugar (depending on how sweet your sweet potatoes are, just taste and add more sugar to taste)
1/2 tsp salt

Method

•  Boil sweet potatoes then peel and mash the sweet potatoes.
•  Add the rest of the ingredients to the mashed potatoes and mix till it forms a paste. 
• Cook it on stove top till it thickens. ( or microwave for 10 minutes, Stir in between . I made it in microwave so its was really quick to make). 
•  Roll out into 8 balls. Put aside while making the pastry dough.

For the Moon Cake Dough:


Water Dough

3/4 cup of all purpose flour / maida (I used maida)
2 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp water (less than half of  1cup)
11/2 tbsp of Butter
A pinch of salt

Oil dough

3/4 cup flour
1/4 cup oil
salt a pinch
1/2 tsp panada  essence (i used Buco panda)

Method

For the water dough

• Sieve flour, sugar and salt.
• Then cut butter into flour mixture using fingertips or pastry blender until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
• Add in water and mix to form a soft, non-sticky dough. If it is sticky, you will need to add a bit more flour to get it to be the right texture. You should be able to form a soft pliable ball that won’t stick to your hands. You don’t have to knead it. Cover and set aside to rest for 20 mins.
• For the oil dough, sift flour and salt.
• Then, make a well in the center of the flour and add in oil and pandan essence. ( I forgot to add color at this stage, So added later to the dough).

•  Draw in the flour from the sides and mix to form a soft even colored dough, , if it’s too sticky, add more dough till you form a soft ball that doesn’t stick to your hands . Do not over-mix. Cover and set aside for 20 mins.

Rolling the cake Dough

•  Preheat oven to 185 C or 350 F. 
•  Divide both the dough(Wet/ water dough as ‘A’ & Oil dough as ‘B’) into 10 equal balls.
• Taking one piece of (A), flatten and wrap (B) in it. Pinch to seal edges. 
•  With the sealed side facing up, roll into a rectangle. 
• Roll up like a snail to form a ‘cylinder’, turn the cylinder 90 degrees, with the end facing up. 
•  Roll again into a long thin strip. 
•  Using a sharp knife or a pastry cutter, cut the cylinder in the middle into two pieces.

• With the cut side facing down, flatten the dough, making the edges slightly thinner than the center. 
•  Stuff the filling and pinch to seal with out pulling too hard, otherwise the layers will tear. And when you pinch, you will find that the bottom looks ugly—don’t worry about it.
•  Place sealed side down on lined baking tray and bake for about 30 mins until the top and bottom are a light golden brown.

Tips:

• Make the Filling Sweeter Than You Might Think Because the outside is rather flaky and hardly sweet at all, it helps to make the filling quite sweet so that the overall pastry is balanced
• The dough will dry out over time and be less easy to work with. So work fast.
• If you feel the oil dough is becoming crumbly and and not forming a firm dough then you can sprinkle lil water and need them nicely .