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
- 1/3 cup of glutinous rice flour for coating
Creamy custard filling
- 1.5 tbsp. custard powder
- 1/2 cup wheat starch +2 tablespoons cake flour
- 100 ml milk
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter ,30grams
- 1/2 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
hi, thanks for this wonderful recipe, but i think there is a confusion,
on your wrapper ingredient does not have cake flour, but on the recipe you mention cake flour? do you mean both the glutinous rice floor and rice floor? or just the rice flour? cos i know the glutinous flour is also got the costing flour. do you mind to clarify them?
Hi Matt,
Cake flour is only required for the filling, not for the wrapper. We will need to mix both glutinous rice flour and rice flour in the dough mixture. I have updated the recipe. Hope it works for you.
can i tint the snowskin with green tea powder? do i still steam it?
Sure, Melina. You can mix green tea powder firstly with the mixture and then steam it.
Hi, I enjoy your video. I tried following it but my outcome was that the wrapper is sticky to eat. What is wrong with it? Pls advise. Thank you!
Hi Sherwin,
You will need to knead the steamed dough until elastic. May need several minutes. Insufficient kneading will cause the wrapper sticky.
Hi, inspired by your post.
May I ask glutinous rice flour, does it means “Kou Fen”? And if yes, what should the proportion be if I only have Kou Fen and Hong Kong Flour? Do I still need to steam the mixture as I was told Kou fen was a steamed flour. Thks for your advice.
Do you mean Gao Fen? Cooked glutinous rice flour? If it is steamed, then you just mix all the ingredients and knead well.
If I use Gao Fen, does it mean that the rice flour and wheat flour do not need to be cooked? So I mix Gao Fen, wheat starch and rice flour and knead with milk and oil?
Yes, K. If you using Gao Fen for dusting. There is no need to cook them anymore.
Sorry, one more question. For the wrapper, can I replace rice flour with all purpose flour? So I use Gao Fen, all-purpose flour and wheat starch and just knead them with milk and oil?
Can I also ask why do you use oil instead of shortening for the wrapper?
Sorry for the questions, I hope you coukd advise me. Thanks!
No, sticky rice flour cannot be substitute by all purpose flour. The purpose of adding oil is to avoid the wrapper drying out or lengthen the drying out process. We do not need to make the wrapper crumbly shells.
Love this mooncake recipe! Tried it once and everyone loved it. Doing it again for this coming moon festival!
Thanks Ka for the lovely feedback. I am making this again this year as my Mid-autumn gift. Glad to know you and your family love this too. Happy Mooncake day!
May I know why do we need to refrigerate the dough for 4 hours ?
Refrigerating can help to make the dough less sticky so you can assemble them easily.
I tried to knead for quite a long time and dough looks glossy and is super stretchy but dough does turn oily. Am I doing the right thing? Have I knead enough?
Is there any water dropped during the steaming process? If the dough is sticky after long time kneading, too much water or insufficient steaming time might be the reasons. You can add some cooked glutinous rice flour to the dough and re-knead.
Love this. Will definitely use this recipe again. Thank you, Elaine!
Happy cooking!
Hi! I’m going to use your recipe for the wrapper and may you tell me what is the total weight of the wrapper? I’m going to make mung bean filling instead, and the total weight of that is 550g. Thanks! 🙂
Hi Bianca,
You will get around 340g wrapper using this recipe. It’s ok to slightly adjust the wrapper and filling ratio.
Hi
I tried to do e custard filling according to your recipe but the filling turns up sticky n not totally hardened after a night in the fridge. What can I add to salvage the filling? its difficult to wrap with soft sticky custard filling. Thanks angie
Hi Angie,
It is quite normal for the filling to be slightly sticky. You can wear plastic gloves when assembling the mooncakes. I do not think adding other ingredients can save the filling. Have you heated the filling enough?
Hi thanks for ur quick reply. Does it need to be boiled completely? I dun think I see mine boiling cos the bottom was slightly burnt n I stopped the cooking.
Then I guess your filling is hot well cooked. If you feel it is slightly burnt, keep the pot away from the heat and stir for a while, then re-heating again. You need to stir them quickly when heating.
Hello, your moon cake looks wonderful. Just wondering could i buy it from you? I want to send some to important friends in Chicago. If i could, please contact me at 2156068808, really appreciate that.
Thanks so much for the comment. I really hope that I can send some to my readers. But I am based in China so shipping to Chicago seems impossible. I am so sorry that I can’t help. Happy Mid-autumn day!
Thanks your response, didn’t recognized you are in China, Happy Mid-autumn day!
Thanks Gu!