Blueberry and Cream Cheese Snow Skin Moon Cake

This is my second moon cake for the year and also one that I did not expect would work out so well. It is a wonder how you can just get ideas from what is left from your pantry when you try to come up with recipes. Blueberries has been dirt cheap for weeks here in Melbourne and my fridge has been stocked up with punnets of them and need I say more?

This mooncake is great when served cold, so when you have prepared them, give them a little chill in the fridge before serving, the kids will love it, and in my case, my husband loved it! :)

Wheat Starch is the key ingredients when making Snow Skin Mooncake

All snow skin mooncake dough calls for wheat starch in the recipe. The reason to that is that when wheat starch are heated, they turn to a translucent dough, which is what makes the snow skin mooncake looks so delicate and pretty!

So what is a wheat starch, you ask? Wheat starch is a starch derived from wheat grain. Although the starch comes from a wheat grain (grains that usually contains gluten forming protein), they are actually processed in a way that removes the gluten part in the starch. This means that wheat starch is actually gluten free! Note that although the processing of wheat starch removes gluten, there is almost never a guarantee that they are a 100% removed and may still contain some traces of gluten. So, if you have high intolerance to gluten, I wouldn't suggest you take this risk. Unfortunately, there isn't any close substitute to wheat starch but you can use corn starch or potato starch instead. However, these substitutes this will mean that your mooncake will not have the same visual and consistency. I personally have not used these substitutes myself, so I am unable to illustrate the difference on opting out on wheat starch in the recipe.

Mooncake Mould

Before you start with the preparation for this mooncake, there is one essential tool that you are going to need: Mooncake mould. There are a few different types of mooncake moulds out there and the most common and modern ones are the ones that has a self release trigger. A more traditional mooncake moulds are made out of wood, which is also great to use. All these moulds can easily be found on eBay or amazon, which is where I got most of my mould. The below picture if the ones I will be using in this post.

Functions of Rice flour in the dough

Snow skin mooncake doughs usually require that you use 3 different types of flours and they are: glutinous rice flour, rice flour and wheat starch. Glutinous rice flour is undoubtedly needed for that gooey texture in your snow skin and wheat starch as mentioned earlier is to create a translucent looking dough. The third flour, Rice flour, functions to hold everything together combining all the other flours and liquid making the cooked dough easier to work with. Without rice flour, the dough can become really soft and sticky and almost impossible to mould without it losing its shape due to its softness.

Dusting Wheat Starch Flour need to be dry heated

You wouldn't eat raw flour would you? If you are not a fan of raw flour, it is recommended that you always dry heat the dusting flour first to get rid of any nasties. The method is really simple, just place a few tablespoon or the amount of flour you think you will need for dusting the moon cake over a wide fry pan. Stir the flour in the pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes or until the wheat starch starts to look like it wants to clump together. Other alternatives for dusting flour are glutinous rice flour or corn flour, which needs to be dry heated as well.

You can dry heat the flour in the oven as well. Simply turn the oven on at 100C for 20 minutes then turn off the oven and spread the flour out on a baking tray and leave them in there for 20 minutes. Make sure you do not put the flour in the oven with the fan on or there will be a lot of cleaning up to do.

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RECIPE

Yield: 13 - 15 Medium Size Mooncakes

Mooncake dough

100 g Icing sugar

60 g Wheat starch

100g Glutinous rice flour

100g Rice flour

460g Milk

60g Sweetened condensed milk

60g Vegetable Oil

* Reserve 200g of the plain dough to make the violet dough.

qs. Violet gel food colouring

Blueberry Cheesecake Filling

100 g Thickened cream 35% Fat

250 g Philadelphia Cream Cheese

45 g Caster Sugar

1 tsp Lemon Juice

1 tsp Vanilla Bean Paste

100 g Small Blueberries

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Method

For the Blueberry Cheese Cake Fillings

Place the cream cheese, lemon juice, vanilla and sugar into a stand mixer bowl fitted with a paddle attachment. Mix until they are well incorporated and the sugar has dissolved. Ensure that there are no lumps of cream cheese in the mix, scrape the bowl down whenever necessary.

Transfer the cream cheese filling on a mixing bowl, place the thickened cream into the mixer bowl attached with a whisk and whisk until it has slightly thickened or semi whipped but not too overly whipped.

Fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese fillings. Fold in the blueberries until they are well distributed.

With a medium size ice cream scoop, scoop out individual ball of fillings of approximately 30 g each then release them onto a plate lined with parchment paper or cling wrap. Cover the top of the individual cream cheese fillings with a cling film and place in the fridge to firm up slightly.