Mooncakes

Of all the recipes I've done so far, I think I've been most excited about these - even when they went horribly, horribly wrong, I was still really excited.  They're a fairly simple thing to make as it turns out (she says before showing you pictures of what she did to them) but it's the principle of the thing - dough, filling, mould, getting them out of the mould, baking, end result.  There's something about actually braving and using the traditional wooden mould that really added to this recipe for me, as well as being another new recipe.

I think I did confess the other day that I bought the fruit mince filling for these though, which made it even simpler (the recipe said I could, and I wasn't going to look a fruit mince gift horse in the mouth with both small people turning the house inside out around me).  If I didn't, then I did.  I was fairly well petrified of them (excited petrified, so kind of a hold-your-breath-(petrified)-mop-your-brow-(also petrified)-hop-around-the-kitchen-(excited) sort of scenario) so opted to concentrate on the dough and the forming of them and just make sure I re-made them at a later date, making the fruit mince as well on the second run.

Turns out I'm going to have to re-make them for more reasons than just the fruit mince, damn it all.  I really could've picked an easier recipe book for this, especially when part of the reason for doing it is to distract my stress levels.  I underestimated how techinical a baker the Global Baker is, and how finely tuned his recipes are.  But, as the husband reminds me, an easier project would be fine but I wouldn't be learning anything.  Yaaaaay learning ...  (I jest)  I think it's just that I bake fine day to day from most books I pick up for bicky tin filling purposes, and yet every time I pick up Global Baker I can pretty much guarantee I'll be either sobbing into my flour bag, or kicking it, at some point soon thereafter.  Frustration.  Mind you, the recipes I really love I do-over and generally get right the second time, so I should stop whinging (pistachio and white chocolate chunk cookies ... oh my).

I took a slightly silly number of pictures, sorry ... it was the excitement.  I got a bit button-happy.

First mooncake into the mould.

First mooncake (dough rolled a bit thin) out of the mould.

Second mooncake - much more successful, although you might have to just take my word for it if you can't see through the photo fuzziness.  (Heh.  I should've taken a shot of number three.  I went to bang the mould on the bench to get it out, except it fell out as I tipped the mould, and with my crap reflexes I ended up banging the mould onto the mooncake and flattening it all over the bench and mould.  Excellent work.  And of course I swore.  In the hearing of two small people.  Very excellent work)

The bit where things have obviously gone pear-shaped, and I start cataloguing my errors.  They lost their imprint I think because I rolled the dough too thin, and when I pressed it into the mould it got thinner.  And then I think I rushed them out of the chilling stage. 

Aw, they look ok, you say?  They've just their imprint, you think? 

Yeah, nah.  Not so much.  Oops.  That's the bit that really had me scratching my head.  I'm in two minds about the temperature in the recipe.  220 degrees C seems like a fairly whopping temperature (I did drop it to allow for my oven being fan-forced, so this happened at just over 200 degrees C).  Could be though that it was temperature combined with too-thin dough because as I was going back through the recipe I realised I'd made another mistake in the mould that I chose, forcing the dough a lot thinner than it should have been.

Aaaand here we go (scroll down - I tried to move the picture but it messed with my formatting, so I'm giving you directions to it instead).  I ran with the round mould, because my poor brain went 'Oh! The picture has round mooncakes, so we must use the round one' and didn't actually pay attention to how big the round mould that is pictured in Global Baker likely is (significantly smaller than my round mould, and fairly obvious about it too as it turns out). 

So, the plan for next time is:

1.  Make own fruit mince.
2.  Make square moon cake.
3.  Turn oven down a smidge.
4.  Don't screw them up again.

Simple .....