Lotus Paste Mooncakes

In China, one of the most important festivals each year is Mid-Autumn Festival. It falls on the moon closest to the autumn equinox. To celebrate, we eat mooncakes. Although there are many variations, the one that I grew up eating was a lotus-paste mooncake with a salted egg yolk inside but other variations include savoury ones, such as pork filled, or sweet ones like read bean. In recent years, new variations have also developed, but I am a stickler for tradition. I have always disliked the salted egg yolk, so this is a fully vegan recipe! This mooncake is a bit savoury but mostly sweet-ish.

There are many variations behind the legends of Mid-Autumn Festival. The most popular regard Chang E, who is a central character in Netflix's Over the Moon. In short, there used to be 10 suns, rising in rotation. But one day, all 10 decided to rise at the same time, scorching the earth. A brave hunter, Hou Yi, decided he would shoot down the sun. As he was about to shoot the tenth sun, the emperor stopped him, reminding him that we needed the sun to survive. As a reward, the emperor gave Hou Yi either an elixir of immortality or two pills.

Here's where the versions split. In one version, Chang E became jealous and drank the elixir. Another says that Hou Yi became a tyrant, and Chang E drank it to save people from an immortal Hou Yi. In both cases, the nuances of immortality was unclear, and Chang E floated away to live on the moon as that was the only place she could become immortal. A third version writes that a criminal came to try and steal the pills and to prevent a criminal from becoming immortal, Chang E ate both pills. One pill would have given her immortality, but the second sent her to the moon. Some versions, including my favourite, claim that someone took pity on Hou Yi and transformed him into the sun afterwards, so that he could be with his love. Regardless, Chang E now lives on the moon with a rabbit and a man who is doomed to cut down an uncuttable tree for all eternity and on the Mid Autumn Festival, we eat mooncakes that remind us of the moon and go lantern walking, to remind her that she's not alone.

There's another (less ethereal) legend that involves a war. One general was trying to send information to another behind enemy lines and baked his messages into the mooncake. He successfully sent his messenger across as the enemy looked at the messenger and could only find mooncakes. Some people will claim that the reason why we add egg yolks into the centre is that it represents the secret messages sent during the war.

Anyways, here's how my attempt at mooncakes. I bought a traditional wooden mooncake mould, but newer versions are available easily online. The dough is adapted from The Woks of Life and the filling from Omnivore's Cookbook. The recipe is long but so, so worth it!

Ingredients

For the Syrup

1. 56 g sugar
2. 30 g water
3. A few drops of lemon juice

For the Filling

For the Dough

Instructions

Syrup

Heat water and sugar in a pan. Swirl to combine. When it boils, turn the heat down and add the lemon juice. Leave the lid off and let it simmer for 60-70 minutes. DO NOT STIR! Once it's done, it should be amber. Let it cool in a heat-safe container, do not touch it! It is very hot!

Lotus Paste

1. Rinse lotus seeds, then cover with at least an inch of water and let them soak for at least 3 hours, preferably overnight.
2. Add seeds to a pot and cover with an inch of water. Bring water to a boil then lower to a simmer with the lid slightly ajar to let steam escape for about an hour or until seeds are soft enough to mash with a fork. Blend the seeds into a puree with 1/3-1/2 cup boiling water. Set aside.
3. Add 1/4 of the sugar and 1/4 of the oil into a pan. Shake and swirl occasionally until the sugar turns amber, but DO NOT STIR!!
4. Add the lotus paste and remaining sugar. Stir until incorporated and until the lotus paste begins to dry, about 5 minutes
5. Incorporate the rest of the oil in 3 portions and stir until fully incorporated.
6. Add the maltose. Don't even bother measuring it out by weight, it's way too sticky. If it's too thick, warm the container up a bit before scooping it. You can grease the spoon to make it easier to transfer into the pan, or you can just lick the spoon clean afterwards!
7. Stir and cook till it is dissolved in the paste.
8. Continue cooking for another 6-10 minutes, until it comes together as one and pulls away from the pan. Remove pan from heat and let it cool. You can use once cool, or refrigerate it for up to a week.

For the Dough

1. Mix sugar syrup, oil, and lye water together. Be careful if you have any wounds on your hand, lye water will burn!
2. Add mixture to flour and use a spatula to fold it in. Do not overwork the dough.
3. Chill dough in airtight container for at least an hour before working with it.

Assembly and Baking

Depending on the size of your mooncake mould, you want to work with about a 1:3 ratio for dough to filling. So if it were a 100g mould, you'd want 25 g of dough per 75 g of filling. Roll your dough out nice and thin and wrap it around the filling (check the Woks of Life article for pictures). Lightly flour your mould and press the dough-filling ball into the mould. If done correctly, your ball should just fit into the mould. For a traditional mould, you'll want to gently smack the mould down on the table upside down to ensure it comes out cleanly. For a more modern one, check the WoL article.

Preheat your oven to 160 C/325 F. Mist your mooncakes with some water, then put them in the oven for 5 minutes. Take them out and brush it with your favourite egg-wash alternative (I simply used more water, but mine were not visually appealing at all, and that's being kind!). Lower oven to 150 C/300 F and bake for a further 15 minutes.

Mooncakes can be kept for a week or two.

So there you have it. A delicious, vegan recipe to celebrate the moon and the lady who lives on it.