Snow skin mooncake (a video recipe) for traditional Chinese Mid-autumn day. This time, we are enjoying creamy custard filling.
Mooncakes are the most popular symbolized festival food for our Mid-autumn day. There are a large group of mooncakes to choose in recent years. Snow skin mooncake is a new family member compared to traditional cantonese mooncakes.
I am quite excited but also a little bit blue, as we will celebrate our Mid-autumn day in following two weeks. For me, mid-autumn day is the most important holiday along with the year because it is my birthday. Most people of my generation in China celebrate birthday based on our lunar calendar. When I was still a young girl, my grandma always cooked yummy dishes, make mooncakes and Sichuan glutinous rice cake to celebrate my birthday. To me, the new city of Shenzhen is familiar but also strange. I do not have any relatives here. The emotion of missing my mom, dad and grand parents is becoming stronger and stronger. And my way to help me out is to make yummy food and share with others. So I make a large box of snow skin mooncake for my husband’s colleagues. If you prefer a colored version, check this post: snow skin mooncakes.
I use creamy custard filling for this year’s snow skin mooncake, as I just can't reject the milky and creamy taste. And I have also posted a famous Dim Sum creamy custard bun previously using the same filling.
To make the snow skin mooncake with the best results, I highly recommend measuring all the ingredients. And there are several tips before you starting making your own.
- To make the perfect custard filling, custard powder is necessary. It is firstly imported by some bakery stores in Hong Kong and now becomes a popular baking ingredient in Mainland China too. It increases the milky aroma and adds a light yellow color to the filling. However if it really too difficult to acquire, you can skip it with some sacrifice of the taste. And if you plan to skip custard powder, using more egg yolks can help to improve the color.
- During the whole processing, stir the liquid forcefully and keep the fire as slow as possible, otherwise the flour might be caking. After heating, continue to stir the filling for several minutes just like the video until the texture becomes very very fine and smooth
- Kneading the wrapper dough is another important tip. This will help to keep the wrapper soft after refrigeration. And usually the wrapper will be slightly sticky even after refrigeration; you can coat your hands with pan-fried glutinous rice flour or ware a kitchen plastic glove.
- In is important to coat the mooncake stamp each time before shaping, otherwise the mooncake might stick to the stamp.
- Helpful ingredient links from Amazon for the appearance reference: water milled glutinous rice flour, water milled rice flour, wheat starch, mooncake stamp. You can try to search them in large local asian stores.
Snow Skin Mooncake-Video Recipe with Custard Filling
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup of glutinous rice flour for coating
Creamy custard filling
- 1.5 tbsp. custard powder
- ½ cup wheat starch +2 tablespoons cake flour
- 100 ml milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter ,30grams
- ½ cup granulated sugar ,60 grams
- 2 eggs ,100g or 1 large egg+ another yolk (whisked)
wrapper
- 45 g glutinous rice flour
- 35 g rice flour water milled version
- 20 g wheat starch
- 40 g sugar or sugar powder
- 185 g milk or unsweetened coconut milk
- 18 g vegetable oil
Instructions
Make creamy custard filling
- In a small pot over slowest heat, dissolve sugar with milk.
- Shift all the flours and custard powder quickly. Stir to combine well. Add egg and butter in. Keep stirring forcefully in the whole process to combine everything and avoid caking. Heat until the mixture becomes very thick and form a paste texture. Remove from fire and keep stirring for several minutes until it becomes fine and smooth.
- Transfer out, cool down and cover with plastic wrapper. Refrigerate for several hours until hardened so you can shape the filling easily.
Make the wrapper
- Combine milk, sugar and oil well and then mix with wheat starch, rice flour and glutinous rice flour.
- Strain once and set aside for 30 minutes. Cover with plastic wrappers and steam over high fire for around 30 minutes until it becomes slightly transparent. Transfer out and stir with chop stickers forcefully for several minutes until fine and smooth. Transfer to a plate and cover with plastic wrapper. Knead with both hands for several minutes until the surface becomes oily. (This is really important to have a soft taste wrapper, so do not skip this). Refrigerate for at least 4 hours before assembling the snow skin mooncake.
Make coating flour
- In a fry pan, stir fry raw glutinous rice flour on medium low heat until the flour turns light yellow. Remove it from the heat. Set aside to cool down.
Assemble
- Measure each wrapper around 20grams and filling 30 grams. And then shape both of wrapper and filling to balls.
- Prepare the dusting flour, filling, wrapper and mooncake stamp. Assemble the mooncake stamp well and then dust with flour. Shake off extra flour and set aside.
- Wrap the filling with wrapper and seal completely. And then shape to a ball firstly and further to an oval. Place the oval to stamp (unsealed side first), flat with bottom with fingers; push the shaping tool to stamp the flowers. Then demold carefully. If you find the mooncake is sticky on the stamp, use the other hand to help separating.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Areta
Hi, was wondering if I can use this custard filling for baked custard mooncakes?
Elaine
Sure!
Jennifer
Hi,
I am having hard time making the custard filling.
It tasted like I added too much flour and there are lumps clear flour. How can I fix this? 🙁
Elaine
Hi Jennifer,
Add an extra amount of water to make the filling a little bit running and then strain the filling to get a smooth version. Just like what I did in mung bean cake.
Olha
Hi! Great recipe! But since I'm a vegan, I cannot use this filling, as it contains eggs. Can you please recommend me a filling I could use? Thank you so much!
Elaine
You can use red bean paste or mung bean paste.
Jan
Hi Elaine,
Could I ask what the measurements of the dry ingredients of the custard filling are in grams?
Thank you!
Elaine
Jan,
Currently, I don't have the actual grams measurement for the filling. I will update it next time when I make buns with custard filling.
Margaret
I made this today, and it was amazing! I looks just like the picture. Thank you for the recipe and for the video. It tastes as good as it looks!
Elaine
Thanks Margaret!
Pola
Hello!
I'd like to make some of this gorgeous cakes but how do you think- is possible to freeze the dough for next preparation?
greetings
Elaine
Pola,
You need to knead the dough until it is still hot. But the well made cake can be kept in fridge for couple of days.
Jelene
Hi , I got bad experience making the snow skin mooncake. The skin looks hard and tastes like rubber . The custard is too ruuny and sweet. Give up
Elaine
How long you store the mooncake?
Joanne
Hello, How do I fix the wrapper dough, it’s very thin and doesn’t stick together. Can I add more glutinous rice flour to the dough and steam again?
Elaine
You can add cooked glutinous rice to adjust the texture, but I don't recommend re-steaming them.
Tina
Hi! Do you have any suggestions on what I could do if I wanted the filling to be firmer? My parents are traditional and are used to mung bean type fillings but custard sounds just too yummy to pass up. I'm hoping to slowly wean them into it lol.
Thanks!!
Elaine
Tina,
You can slightly reduce the water amount or add more rice flour to get a firmer texture.
Karina
I’ve made this the snow skin wrapper recipe a million times- always perfect always tasty! Easiest to prepare compare to other recipes. Thank you so much for sharing and for this BEAUTIFUL blog.
Much love from New Mexico, USA
Karina
Elaine
Thank you so much Karina for trying and this lovely feedback!!
Ying
Hi, for the wrapper if I use unsweetened coconut milk for the wrapper, it is much thicker than normal milk. Does this affect the end result? Thanks.