Amy Ho Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You are listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of three baking books, including my latest, “Snackable Bakes.” Each Saturday I'm hanging out with the sweetest bakers around and taking a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Amy Ho. Amy is the culinary creative behind the popular Constellation Inspiration blog. Amy's known for her intricate, beautiful desserts and gorgeous photography. Seriously, check out her blog and Instagram because her attention to detail and creativity will blow your mind. She's also the author of the book Blooms and Baking, and was a Saveur blog awards finalist. Amy and I chat about mooncakes, the signature dessert of the Mid-Autumn Festival, which is celebrated by Asian communities around the world. Amy makes some of the most beautiful mooncakes I've ever seen. So I've asked her to join me to talk about the tradition and how she developed her recipe for the perfect mooncake. Stay tuned for my chat with Amy.
Thank you to Plugrà Premium European-style butter for supporting today's show. I've been using Plugrà butter ever since my first baking job. My fellow bakers introduced me to Plugra as the butter to use and the one with the best flavor. It was also the butter that they used at home, which says a lot. Ever since then, I've relied on Plugrà for all of my baking projects, like testing recipes for my cookbooks and my freelance recipe development work, and trying the recipes we talk about here on the podcast. Everything from chocolate chip cookies to galets, poundcake, hand pies, choux pastry and blondies. The pastry chefs and bakers I interview all agree and they're the best in the business, ingredients matter. And a quality butter is key to all of these baked goods. Plugrà Premium European style butter is a great choice because it contains 82% butter fat. Also, it's slow churned, making it more pliable and easy to work with. My go-to are the unsalted sticks. I get to control the amount of salt in the recipes and the sticks are individually wrapped, which makes them easy to measure. If you don't have a scale, no problem, sticks or solids, salted or unsalted, whichever you prefer. Plugrà Premium European style butter is the perfect choice. From professional kitchens to your home kitchen, ask for Plugrà at your favorite grocery store or visit Plugra.com for a store locator and recipes.
Let's check in with today's guest. Amy, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie and to talk mooncakes with you and so much more.
Amy Ho:
Thanks for having me. Mooncakes are one of my favorite treats of the entire year and I'm so excited.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too. First of all, you have a truly incredible Instagram with absolutely mesmerizing reels like that giant mango mochi.
Amy Ho:
Thank you.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you said on IG recently that in the beginning of being on that platform, it was all about rustic cakes for you as you didn't feel like your buttercream skills were up to par and that cookies rarely made an appearance. Tell us about that shift in your sweets making journey. And in so doing, tell us about your dessert style.
Amy Ho:
I started Instagram and my blog through making a lot of layered cakes, very celebration worthy type of cakes and baking. But slowly through making those layered cakes and stacking it with lots of buttercream, I kind of leaned towards cookies and smaller baked goods that I can easily share with friends. And I feel like my audience really liked the idea of shareable treats. And through the last few years I really leaned into Asian type of baking as well, because I feel deeply connected with making treats that I ate growing up. That never really gets too much attention in the blogging or Instagram world. And I'm really excited every time that I get to share a recipe or a recipe that's inspired by my upbringing.
Jessie Sheehan:
You received a Saveur Blog Award nomination and you became a finalist in 2019, and then your cookbook Blooms and Baking came out in 2020. Can you tell us about the book? I know flowers are a passion of yours and you've said you sort of have this true love affair with them.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I worked on the book while I was in Ohio doing the blog award stuff, so I had to keep it on the DL. So after I was done with the blog award events during the daytime, I was in the hotel room writing out the manuscript. It was kind of hectic. I worked on the book for quite a few years and then it came out right at almost the first week of COVID, which was slightly unfortunate because all the book shipments got delayed. But eventually it all worked out because people were really baking at home and I got to do a lot of Instagram lives, and there was recordings of going through each recipe with viewers and they had a lot more time to do that type of baking
Jessie Sheehan:
And tell us what the book is about for those people that don't have a copy.
Amy Ho:
“Blooms and Baking” is a collection of recipes and stories inspired by edible flowers and how to infuse floral flavors and tasting notes into your everyday baked goods. The recipes are great even if you take out the floral component. But we're using these floral components whether it's through fresh flowers, dried flour extracts to really give like a oomph to that baked good. So we have things like elder flour, buttercream with lemon cake or cherry blossom sublais. And everything is really seasonal and I break the book up into types of desserts like cakes, cookies, mochis, but there's also a great seasonality to it because we are trying to pull from what flowers are blooming at that time.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you've said that you love photography almost as much or maybe as much as you love baking, and that is totally evident in the gorgeous photos on your blog. Even the recipe we're talking about today includes salted egg yolks, and even the photo of the salted egg yolks in their packaging in the blog post of this recipe is so beautiful. So I'm just in awe. So not only are you great at taking beautiful still photos, but you're also incredible at making videos. How did that come about? Just because we all had to start making videos rather than just doing flat Instagram because of the algorithm. Did you ever practice with making videos prior to reels coming around? Yours are so great and so mesmerizing to look at.
Amy Ho:
Thank you so much. Making Instagram Reels via adapting to the Instagram algorithm was really my first job at making videos in general. Before I was definitely a photograph girly and I taught myself photography through launching the blog before I started with using strictly iPhone photos for my blog. Then my parents very generously gifted me my first camera for a Christmas a few years ago. And through practice I improved. And then when reels came about, I was obviously one of those people that are like, oh my gosh, I really like photos a lot more. But the more I did Instagram Reels, I liked how it really showed the beginning to the end process of making a baked good and I just have so much fun now doing Instagram Reels, especially doing the voiceovers because people get to know you a lot better through you telling the story while making the baked good.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll be right back. Today's episode is presented by California Prunes. I'm a California prunes fan when it comes to smart snacking and baking. First off, California Prunes are good for your gut, your heart, and even your bones. Prunes contain dietary fiber and other nutrients to support good gut health, potassium to support heart health and vitamin K, copper and antioxidants to support healthy bones. And of course, prunes are a great addition to scones, cakes and crackers. Anything you're baking that calls for dried fruit, consider California Prunes. Prunes work perfectly in recipes with rich and complex flavors like espresso, olives and chilies, and they enhance the flavor of warm spices, toffee, caramel and chocolate.
If you love baking swaps and experimenting with natural sweeteners, you can replace some of the sugar in a recipe with California prune puree. Prune puree is a cinch to make as it's a blend of prunes and water. You can find more details on the California prunes website, Californiaprunes.org. While you're there, be sure to check out all the delicious recipes, including the salty snack chocolate fudge with pretzels and California prunes inspired by the recipe from my cookbook, Snackable Bakes. Happy baking and happy snacking.
Kerry Diamond:
Hi, everybody, I'm Kerry Diamond, the founder of Cherry Bombe and the editor in chief of Cherry Bombe Magazine. If you are looking for the newest issue of Cherry Bombe, be sure to visit one of our amazing stockists. Cherry Bombe is carried by great bookstores, cafes, magazine shops, and culinary boutiques across the country and abroad. Places like Back in the Day Bakery in Savannah, Good Cakes and Bakes in Detroit and Le Dix-Sept Pâtisserie in San Francisco. Visit CherryBombe.com for stockist near you.
Jessie Sheehan:
All right, now it is time to talk about baked tarot and salted egg yolk mooncakes.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
First of all, for those listeners who might not know, what is a mooncake?
Amy Ho:
So mooncake is the traditional pastry or baked good that's often enjoyed during Mid-Autumn festival. A Mid-Autumn festival is a really important Chinese holiday that's celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. So the date changes every year, and this year it falls on September 29th. It's almost our equivalent to Thanksgiving. So it's a time for families to come together to be thankful for the year and to enjoy the moon together. It's said that the moon is the roundest and the brightest during Mid-Autumn festival. That's why there's a salted egg yolk in each mooncake because it represents the full moon.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think you've described it as like a puck sized dessert.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, it's around the size of a puck, you can find mooncakes that are slightly smaller, some mooncakes slightly bigger, but in general they're around like four inches in diameter. It's a great personal size pastry, but it's extremely rich. So usually my family of four people, we would all share one mooncake and have hot tea to accompany the cake because it is very sweet and dense. And it's definitely not something you want to eat all by yourself in one sitting or bite into, you cut into eight little slices and you enjoy each slice with a cup of tea.
Jessie Sheehan:
I think traditionally there's sort of an earthy lotus filled paste and then a thin soft crust. Is that-
Amy Ho:
Yeah, more traditional mooncakes are usually a lotus seed paste which is very nutty and earthy. So it's like grinding up, soaked and cooked lotus seeds. It's a very expensive baked good because lotus seed paste is very expensive and laborious to make. You have to soak the lotus seeds, you have to remove each pit because it's extremely bitter if you don't remove it. But through the years there are many more types of fillings that got introduced. Lotus seed is still the most popular and the most traditional, but now you see fillings that are like taro, like the recipe we're going to discuss today or things like red bean paste. Now when you go to an Asian grocery store, you might even see ice cream mooncakes and mooncakes that resemble more like mochi. But yeah, it started as lotus seed paste but now we see a variety of fillings and crusts.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now, you have written that you've been on a journey to perfect your mooncake because originally yours did not have a perfectly golden hue and the salted egg yolk peaked through the crust, but you persevered by adding two ingredients that really helped you get the color and shine that you wanted. Can you tell us what those two ingredients are and what you were using before you changed ingredients?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I think they're two important ingredients that make mooncakes a mooncake. When I first started making mooncakes, I was not too familiar with mooncakes besides eating them while growing up. So there was a list of ingredients that most mooncakes use, and I didn't have those ingredients on hand because there's such niche ingredients that is not an everyday pantry ingredient. So I decided to start making mooncakes without those ingredients and finding good substitutes for it. So the two main ingredients that give mooncakes its beautiful color and the tenderness that is associated with the pastry is alkaline water and golden syrup. So alkaline water is something that you might be familiar with if you're really into Japanese ramen noodles. They give ramen noodles that bright golden color and its springiness. And that's what is in the dough for mooncakes that give its golden hue.
It also helps keep it tender. Alkaline is what neutralizes golden syrup in a mooncake dough recipe. The golden syrup keeps the crust very moist. So when I say crust, you might be thinking pie crust, but it's definitely not like that. The really super tender buttery crust that's super soft, both the alkaline water and the golden syrup work together to create that effect. And it also gives it this really deep golden brown color. But previously I tried substituting honey for the golden syrup and making my own alkaline water by baking baking soda, cooking it with water. It was kind of like a big process, laborious process to make your own alkaline water, but it's something that you can actually eat very easily found at your Asian grocery stores. Yeah, those are two ingredients that I feel like really stepped up my mooncake game.
Jessie Sheehan:
I also understand that a baked mooncake is a more traditional approach to mooncake making. But that now they're kind of more modern mooncakes like non baked ones, such as a snow skin moon cake which is wrapped in a glutenous rice paper. The one we're going to talk about today is baked. Do you make both? Do you make the non baked one at home too or are you a baked purist?
Amy Ho:
I love both types of mooncakes, both the traditional baked kind and the non baked snow skin moon cake. The baked type of mooncakes have been around for many, many years. And that's what's been traditionally enjoyed during Mid-Autumn festival. I think through my extensive research, I found out that snow skin mooncakes came about in the 1960s when people realized that traditional mooncakes aren't that healthy for you because they're so rich, full sugar and fat. And snow skin mooncakes become the answer, or it's the kind of healthier alternative to traditional mooncakes. So they're much lighter. Sometimes they have a fruit filling, sometimes a lighter cream filling. And like you said, it's wrapped in a chewy glutenous rice flour wrapper, almost mochi-like. Snow skin mooncakes have to be kept chilled, hence the name snow skin.
And you can get a lot more creative with snow skin mooncakes because you can change the wrapper into any color you like through whether it's food coloring or freeze-dried fruit powders, the choices for filling are endless. You can do fruits, you can do custards, you can do ice cream. As long as you have the moon cake mold, you can make almost anything into a moon cake.
Jessie Sheehan:
That was a great transition because my next question was about moon cake molds. I know that traditionally they were wooden paddles, but now what you use at home is it just like a modern plastic plunger?
Amy Ho:
The more traditional way of making mooncakes is with a wooden paddle. So you create the moon cake and the filling and the wrapper and you press it into this wooden paddle. And then you have to pray that it does not get stuck in the wooden paddle. You make sure it's floured generously and then you whack it against the table to release the mooncake. I have one of these wooden mooncake paddles because I just love the nostalgia factor of it. I got it in Chinatown. There are a few stores left in Chinatown and Vancouver that sells these traditional mooncake molds. Now I use a plastic mooncake almost like a plunger. So you put the mooncake into the little mold and when you press it against the table to create the imprint and then you plunge it out almost like a cookie stamp, it's much easier.
Your moon cake won't get stuck as often, but it's much easier and is much more easily accessible. L-Express has a ton of mooncake molds much more current in terms of what type of designs are popular in Asia right now. Amazon has a lot of plastic ones that have a traditional print, and you'll see that from year to year new mooncake designs coming out. So usually ones we'll celebrate the zodiac signs or newer ones show little cartoon designs like Hello Kitty or Snoopy. So yeah, I feel like when you go online you get a lot more possibilities and designs, but I still love going to Chinatown and supporting local mom and pop shops and buying my mooncake molds that way too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. Let's talk about making this recipe. So the first thing first is we're going to make a taro coconut filling. We're going to wash and peel taro root and purple yam. And you're using the yam for the color, right? It could just be straight up taro, correct?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, it could be straight up taro if that's what you prefer. I like to add a little bit of purple yam so the color of the filling is a lot more vibrant and more festive looking because taro root is usually almost like a dull purple gray color. And it has its beautiful patterns and specs of darker purple in it, but it's not as beautiful as you add a little bit of purple yam. Completely optional, but I just like it for the aesthetics of it as well. And the fillings still predominantly tastes like taro. The purple yam doesn't add too much extra flavor, it's just more so color.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to peel the tarot and the purple yam with a potato peeler.
Amy Ho:
Honestly, I use a potato peeler from the dollar store, so whatever good potato peeler. If you don't have one, you can just simply use a kitchen knife to remove the outer fibrous layer. It's almost like a very woody, so as long as you remove the woody stringy outer layer, you're good.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you say that it's important to wear gloves when you're working with taro only because it can leave your skin feeling waxy and itchy. Is there a certain kind of glove or just a kitchen glove?
Amy Ho:
Any kitchen glove is fine. That's what my mom and my grandpa told me growing up. Every time I see them prepare taro, whether it's in a savory dish or a sweet dish, they always wore kitchen gloves and was like, "Amy, if you don't wear kitchen gloves, it might leave your skin feeling itchy." And that happens with my parents, but I've tried. I live life on the edge and I touched the taro without the kitchen gloves and I was fine. But I've been told all my life, I encourage you to use gloves just in case you have a type of reaction to the taro. But yeah, any type of kitchen glove is fine. Or if you don't have kitchen gloves, I feel like you can just cut it and just rinse your hand right after, completely okay as well.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect, now we're going to cut the taro and the yam into one inch cubes. Is there a particular knife or we're using a chef's knife?
Amy Ho:
Just a normal kitchen knife is fine. Anything that's sharp enough to cut through, anything that you would use to cut a sweet potato or a hardy root vegetable because taro is quite dense and hard to cut into. So if you're okay with cutting potatoes or normal sweet potatoes with a certain knife that you have in your house, use that.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, perfect.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to place the tarot and the purple yam into a steamer or a steaming basket.
Amy Ho:
I've always borrowed my mom's because she has a very big steamer, but recently I've used the steamer and pan from our place. I love that steamer, it kind of sits in your almost like a frying pan and so you don't need that much water. And it gets really hot really quick and it steams it perfectly.
Jessie Sheehan:
And so then we're going to steam till fork tender, about 30 minutes. Once steamed, we're going to use either a fork or a potato ricer.
Amy Ho:
I just picked up a nice potato ricer with a wooden handle from Williams Sonoma and that's what I've been using for several years and have no issues with it. So I haven't used too many different types of wooden erasers, but the ones from Williams Sonoma are great.
Jessie Sheehan:
Amazing. So we're going to mash the taro and the purple yam till smooth. You can also do this in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment, but which do you prefer? I won't lie. I'm the queen of, if you can just do it in a bowl on the counter and you don't have to pull out a stand mixer, that's my jam. What about you, when you're at home do you use the stand mixer or do you do it in a bowl?
Amy Ho:
I mostly do it in a bowl with a potato ricer versus stand mixer. If I need to make a very big batch to give out to family and friends during Mid-Autumn festival, I might use the stand mixer so I can be a bit more hands off while I make something else. But I kind of like the manual labor of ricing the Taro and the sweet potato because I like to sneak a little like chef's snack for myself while I'm ricing it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Next we're going to add coconut milk. I assume it's full fat coconut milk,
Amy Ho:
Full fat coconut milk for sure is the way to go, and it just kind of binds the filling together, adds a creamy texture and layer of flavor. Any type of coconut milk you like is great. Right now I'm using an organic coconut milk from Whole Foods, the 365 brand. I usually just go for what's on sale and it's always worked out great.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to add the coconut milk, some sugar and some kosher salt to our yam and our taro, and we're going to mix until well combined and smooth. And then we're going to chill in the fridge for two hours. Does the chilling make the taro easier to work with?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, it makes it much easier to work with. When we use chilled taro filling or any type of moon cake filling, it makes the wrapper dough more easy to work with as well because if your taro filling is really hot, it kind of makes the wrapper too soft to work with and you might get tears in your moon cake while using the plunger. So I definitely recommend chilling the taro filling before you work with it. If you want to speed up the process, feel free to take a baking sheet or a large plate and then spread out the taro filling that way so it chills a lot quicker.
Jessie Sheehan:
Would you ever stick it in the freezer?
Amy Ho:
Sticking to the freezer is fine, just take it out before it gets rock hard frozen. Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, now we're going to make the moon cake dough.
Amy Ho:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So in a large measuring cup, is that like a four cup measuring cup and should it be glass?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I'm just using the large measuring cup from Pyrex just because it's easy and I can see the measurements on the side. And that's the one I'm using the four cup like you said, to mix together the liquid ingredients.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're going to whisk in the measuring cup golden syrup, which is Lyle's or Lyle's is the brand.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Well, you could use honey as you said, but you just won't get the color that we want. And could you use corn syrup?
Amy Ho:
I personally have never tried corn syrup, but when I've read so much about mooncake making and I even have a little book that's in Chinese about mooncake making with honey, you don't get the same color. When I use honey, the moon cake comes off it almost looks under baked because it's almost... When you look at golden syrup's it's like a deeper golden brown versus honey's a lighter yellow color. It looks almost under baked even when we make an egg wash for it. So it still tastes amazing, but it just doesn't look like a traditional mooncake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah, I feel like often in baking recipes, if you don't have golden syrup you can substitute light corn syrup.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it would probably work but it sounds like you would never get the color that you want.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I tried using honey and baking it almost longer, and it would kind of dry out the moon cake before it reaches the color that you would get with golden syrup.
Jessie Sheehan:
And we're also going to add some vegetable oil to our syrup.
Amy Ho:
You can use any type of neutral oil, vegetable oil, canola oil, peanut oil is really common as well. I try to stay away from peanut oil just because of people's allergies. But any type of neutral oil, what brand you're comfortable with or have at home will work really well.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we're going to add this alkaline or this lye water, the Kansui brand where you said we could find it maybe at a Chinese grocery store.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, it's getting more and more common, I feel the last few years it has definitely popped up a lot more. When you go to an Asian grocery store, you can tell them you're looking for alkaline water. They might ask you, "Oh, what are you making with it?" And usually people say mooncakes or noodles. It gives that springy texture. So I'm pretty sure the workers at the Asian grocery stores will guide you in the right way when you tell them that you need alkaline water.
Jessie Sheehan:
And that water is going to give the shine and the color that we want, just like the Lyles golden syrup is.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to pour this mixture into a large bowl.
Amy Ho:
I just pour it into kind of my stand mixture bowl because usually what's out on the counter, but any bowl is fine. There won't be any crazy reaction between the mixture and the type of bowl because I know some people wouldn't make anything that's citrusy in a metal bowl because it might impart some of the metallic flavors. But for this, any type of bowl is fine.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay, great. And we're going to add some flour.
Amy Ho:
All-purpose is the type of flour we're working with. Some recipes you might ask for cake flour. But when I found that when I'm using cake flour the dough gets almost too delicate and hard to work with. So I prefer using all-purpose. When I'm doing a lot of recipe testing, I'm using flour that I just get from a grocery store like Rogers or like Robinhood. But when I go to this local bakery and flour mill that I really like here in Vancouver called Flourist, I get their flour and I like making mooncakes with those two.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to fold the flour together with the syrup and with the oil, and we're going to fold, I assume maybe with a rubber spatula.
Amy Ho:
Rubber spatula is great. With my potato ricer, I just got mine from Williams Sonoma because I love the different designs they come up with every season. Usually a mooncake festival falls near Halloween fall time, so I'm usually using some seasonal autumn spatula from Williams Sonoma to make my mooncakes.
Jessie Sheehan:
So the dough is so simple. It's literally just water syrup, oil and flour, yes?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, it's super simple and it's going to be a light golden yellow color when you first make it. It might seem like it's a bit tacky and sticky at first, but then we're going to rest the dough and that's going to help everything come together.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to cover the dough before we rest it. Are we covering with a dish towel or plastic wrap?
Amy Ho:
I use plastic wrap just to wrap around the bowl that I was mixing everything in, but a dish towel works too.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. And we're just going to chill that in the refrigerator for one hour. And then it's going to be assembly time.
Amy Ho:
The most fun part about making mooncakes is the assembly and the thrill you get when you see the design come out of the mold.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to heat the oven to 325, which is a little bit low, yes?
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
I feel like so many things are baked at 350.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I want to give a mooncake time for the inside to cook through without burning or having the exterior get too dark.
Jessie Sheehan:
First we're going to weigh, and I just had to ask, do you have a favorite scale?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, making mooncakes it's very important that you weigh out your dough and your filling. So there's like a kind of golden ratio when it comes to mooncake making. Some people like to use the three to seven ratio, which is exactly what I use, or a two to three ratio is also common. It just depends on how thick you like the dough compared to the filling. There's no correct way, but three to seven or two to three is the most common golden ratios for making mooncakes. And I like to achieve that by using a kitchen scale or a coffee scale, which is in my case what I'm using. I make a pour of a coffee every morning, so I have the kitchen scale out already so I just use that. I don't have a very specific brand I like to use, but anything that can measure down very specific to the 0.0 grams would be great.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you say three to seven, can you tell us what that means?
Amy Ho:
So three to seven ratio, so mooncake molds come in several different sizes but the 50 gram mooncake mold is the most common for making personal size mooncakes. So a three to seven ratio would be like a 15 gram wrapper for a 35 gram filling. And I try to keep that in mind when I'm making mooncakes because I feel like that creates the most even and perfect wrapper to filling ratio.
Jessie Sheehan:
So basically we want 35 grams of filling. If we're just using a taro filling, then we're just going to weigh 35 grams of taro. But if we're filling with an egg yolk, we want to measure the weight of the egg yolk plus the taro and have that equal 35. Is that right?
Amy Ho:
Yes. So you just always want the filling to equal 35. It doesn't matter what kind of add-ins you want to put into your filling. Some people like it plain without the salted egg yolk, which I don't agree with because the egg yolk is one of my favorite parts about eating mooncakes. Egg yolks differ by size, but then you just want to make sure that the filling plus the egg yolk add to 35 grams, and that the dough is 15 grams so that you don't have too much filling where the dough doesn't completely encase the filling.
Jessie Sheehan:
So if we're using the salted egg yolks, they're duck eggs?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, so they're cured duck egg yolks. You can get it at a lot of Asian grocery stores. So when you go to Asian grocery stores you'll see salted egg yolks in a little kind of vacuum sealed package and they sell you just the egg yolks. I like buying that because it's much less work than buying a case of salted eggs and having to remove the whites. And find a purpose for those whites that you discarded and only using the yolks. When you're at the store you'll also find that some salted egg yolks are cooked and some are not. I like buying cooked salted egg yolks so I can omit the step of having to cook it myself. And another bonus of buying salted egg yolks on its own in a vacuum seal pack is you can kind of see the shape and the color of the egg yolks. I like to try to get ones that are deep orange, golden color because they just make a more beautiful mooncake versus the egg yolks that you get when you buy the full duck egg.
You might open up the egg and realize, oh, the salted egg yolk is kind of like a paler yellow kind of chalky color. So you can pick and choose your egg yolks more easily if you buy it in the vacuum seal pack.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to wrap that bit of taro around the egg yolk, and then that's going to be our filling or it'll just be straight 35 grams of taro if we're not using the yolk. And we're going to weigh the dough now, the outside of the moon cake as it were into 15 gram pieces. And we'll keep any leftover dough for mending if the dough cracks during the shaping process. So we're going to take a taro ball that isn't 35 grams but equals 35 if you add the egg yolk. You'll take your taro ball, you'll make a deep well and insert one salted yolk into the well. Close the top, reshape into a ball, and you say this which seems important, you want to make sure that egg yolk is as centered as possible
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
That it's surrounded equally by taro on the side.
Amy Ho:
Yeah, because when you cut into the mooncake, you want to have the egg yolk right in the middle because that's the centerpiece of the mooncake that represents the full moon. It's completely fine if it's slightly off to the side, to the left or the right. But it's just much more of a dramatic reveal if it's perfectly centered in the mooncake.
Jessie Sheehan:
And peeps, you have to go to Amy's blog to see so many pictures of dramatic reveal, they're just so gorgeous. So now we're going to lightly dust our 15 gram dough balls, or I think you also call it like mooncake wrappers with flour and roll them.
Amy Ho:
I'm just currently using a rolling pin from Wilton. That's what I used to roll all my cookies. That's my baking rolling pin for my photo rolling pin that you see in all my mooncake photos. I'm using a ceramic one from anthropology. They're quite delicate that's why I don't use it as my everyday baking rolling pin. So my ceramic one's for photos, but my trusty Wilton one that I've been using for seven or eight years is my go-to baking rolling pin.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to roll out our 15 grams of dough with flour between two pieces of parchment paper into a four-inch round.
Amy Ho:
If you don't have parchment paper, you can do saran wrap as well. I just find that it's more like non-stick when you use parchment paper. I've tried just dusting my kitchen counter and rolling it that way without any parchment paper saran wrap. It might get a bit frustrating when you're trying to remove the thin delicate wrapper off the counter, but if you don't have either parchment paper saran wrap, you can just dust the kitchen counter very generously and roll it out that way.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to put one ball of tarot filling in the center of the rolled out dough, and then we're going to use parchment paper to fold the dough around the filling so that it wraps it. Can you explain that to us how the parchment paper works to fold the dough wrapper around the taro filling?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, after you've rolled out the dough between the two pieces of parchment paper which is my preferred method, I remove the top piece of parchment paper and then I plop the taro egg yolk filling ball onto the wrapper. And I find it much easier if you invert it and then slowly unpeel the second piece of parchment paper so that it naturally drapes over the taro filling without you having to maneuver it too much, which gives it much higher chance of it cracking. So you kind of flip it over and slowly remove the paper and it'll drape around the filling and you can use your fingers to mold it so it covers up the entire filling ball.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I love that. Yeah, that's so smart. I love the draping.
Amy Ho:
Because the dough is quite tender it drapes really nicely. It's not too common that you'll get cracks, but if it does happen, you can just easily pinch it back together to close up that little crack.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. And you also said that you can patch any holes with any of your reserve dough?
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to turn the open side up and press together to close the opening with the dough, so covering all the surfaces of the filling, keeping the distribution of dough as even as possible.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then with a pastry brush, we're going to dust our mooncake mold.
Amy Ho:
I'm using one from Jamie Oliver that I got from HomeSense. Any pastry brush will work as long as it can fit in the mooncake mold so you can dust the mooncake mold evenly, that'd be great.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I know where we can buy our mooncake molds if we want to do kind of the plastic plunger one. Is there a brand?
Amy Ho:
There are no brands because they're all such different designs and so many different people make them that they never really have a brand on it. It's usually some cute cartoon character that's a weird color, and it has Chinese phrases that say moon cake or Mid-Autumn festival, but there's never a brand on these moon cake molds.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so interesting.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to take our pastry brush, we're going to dust our mooncake mold with flour. Then we're going to place our assembled dough ball into the mold, and with the mold facing upwards we're going to press the dough ball into the mold cavity. Now that sounds scary to me because I'm worried about breaking my salted egg yolk.
Amy Ho:
Don't worry, that's nothing you have to fear, salty egg yolks are pretty solid and firm. There's almost zero chance that you'll break the salty egg yolk. We're not really jamming it in. We're just gently pressing the dough ball in to make sure there's no gaps between the dough ball and the mooncake mold. So when you press onto it, the design imprints onto the mooncake evenly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Okay. So now we're going to flip our mold over, press the moon cake down with... I read this, the top pressure bar. What's the pressure bar?
Amy Ho:
It's basically the plunger. So when you're using a normal cookie stamp, you kind of give a few presses on the plunger to make the design. And this is exactly the same with mooncake molds. Usually mooncakes molds have the plunger and a little handlebar that's... I guess the easiest way to describe it's almost like a syringe. You know how when you press a syringe there's the top plastic part and then another plastic bar for your two fingers? It looks exactly like that for the mooncake mold. So you just press the plunger against the bar to create the design.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to gently remove the mooncakes from the mold, and we're going to place the mooncakes onto a parchment lined baking sheet.
Amy Ho:
I'm currently just using the baking sheet from Williams Sonoma, the gold touch pro, the super non-stick one.
Jessie Sheehan:
I adore those. I have those in every size.
Amy Ho:
I cannot vouch enough for good quality sturdy baking sheets that don't warp in the oven. My biggest fear is when you're baking cookies or cakes on a normal thin baking sheet and you hear that pop in the oven while it's baking and you're like, oh no, my cookies are going to slide to one side of the oven or the baking sheet. So I love the William Sonoma gold touch pro ones because they're so sturdy and they don't warp in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to use a spray bottle to gently mist our mooncakes with water.
Amy Ho:
If you don't have a spray bottle, you can also just use a pastry brush, dip it into water and very lightly brush on a thin layer of water onto the mooncakes. We do this to prevent the mooncake from cracking in the initial bake, so it can keep the design that we have on the mooncake.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you think that's a tip? The water is a tip for anything you're baking with a design, like that you've stamped.
Amy Ho:
I tend to only use it for mooncakes because the dough is so tender and soft that it has a tendency to crack. And because moon cake designs are so intricate, usually it's an animal or a little cartoon character but oftentimes you'll see a Mid-Autumn phrase or greeting on these mooncakes. So you have Chinese characters across the entire top side of the moon cake. So I find it very important to do that water step to make sure you get the full design and nothing warps or breaks while it's baking.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to immediately put our mooncakes in the oven, and we're going to bake for five minutes. And while the mooncakes bake, we're going to prepare our egg wash, egg yolk and water. Do you ever use a whole egg or you just like a wash with a yolk just for this recipe, or all your recipes do you make an egg wash with just a yolk?
Amy Ho:
Generally I use the full egg for a egg wash, but for mooncakes because we're going after the deeply golden color, the egg yolk egg wash is what I prefer. I've done both. You do get a much deeper yellow color when you use just the egg yolk for the egg wash.
Jessie Sheehan:
So after five minutes, we're going to take the mooncakes out and we're going to place on a wire rack.
Amy Ho:
I'm using the one that comes with the Williams Sonoma pan, the gold touch one.
Jessie Sheehan:
Me too.
Amy Ho:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to brush a thin layer of the egg wash onto the mooncakes, and we want to make sure that there are no large puddles of egg wash which will make the designs less defined. I had a question, how come we can't just egg wash right from the beginning? Why do we have to give it five minutes with the water before we put on the egg wash?
Amy Ho:
I've tried both ways, when you do the water and the egg wash together, the egg and the water doesn't mix fully and it creates little puddles of different color washes and topping which is not very attractive. When you use water first and then bake it, then add the egg wash, it kind of helps the design stay more detailed. This way, because we're also baking for a longer time, there's less likely of a chance of the egg wash from burning or turning too deep in color before the moon cake fully cooks.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes until a deep golden brown. We're going to remove our mooncakes from the oven. And I like this, you say that the mooncakes will look dry at this point as opposed to glossy and with that glossy sheen of mooncakes from the store. But that's okay because it's actually the cooling of the mooncakes in an airtight container for a day that helps develop that glossy finish. Is that right?
Amy Ho:
Yeah. The first time I made mooncakes, I was like, why do my mooncakes look so dull? I used the egg wash, do I add more egg wash? I've done once in the beginning where I did egg washes twice, and I'm like, why does it not look like a store-bought moon cake that's so shiny and glossy? It's because after you take mooncakes out of the oven, you let it cool, you're supposed to leave it in the airtight container, so it kind of develops the sheen. There's a word in Chinese for it to describe this very specific step which I love. It's called huí uóu, and it directly translates to returning of oil or exiting of oil. So the oil within the filling and the wrapper surfaces on to the moon cake. And it gives us this beautiful shine and it becomes even more tender than when you first took it out of the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh my gosh, I love that. And then after a day when the shine and the color has come out, do you serve it that day? Do you store them for longer? When is it best to serve your mooncakes?
Amy Ho:
Mooncakes are good for quite a long time, but usually they're gone within a week in my house. But we try to serve it when you see the first bit of shininess come back to the mooncake wrapper because we're so eager to try what we just made. The waiting is painful. I just made these beautiful mooncakes and I can't try them right away. It just seems so odd because usually when you bake cookies, you're like, oh, it's fresh out of the oven. It's still warm, the chocolate's still melty. I can't wait to dig into it. But for mooncakes, it's like the epitome of good things come to those who wait, because when you let the mooncake rest it becomes better and better.
Jessie Sheehan:
I wanted to talk just about two other recipes of yours now that we have learned so much about mooncakes, thank goodness. But I wanted you to tell us about the jasmine blueberry ice cream choux puffs from your book. I think you said that the choux recipes were some of your favorite in the book.
Amy Ho:
I feel like choux pastry was one of those things where before I made it, I was so intimidated by it. I was so scared of things that could go wrong during the process. Like what if it doesn't rise properly? What if it's too eggy? What if it doesn't cook in the middle? But through practice, I feel like choux pastry is almost one of my favorite things to make. I love choux pastry because you can fill it with whatever you like, whatever's seasonal, whatever the occasion is, you can fill it with the recipe you're talking about with jasmine and blueberry. I actually love making choux pastries during Mid-Autumn as well, and I fill it with even taro or a salted egg cream. It's so multi-purpose and such a good blank canvas for whatever filling. And I think that's why I'm always drawn to it.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the book it's a blueberry ice cream that's flavored with jasmine that goes in the choux pastry?
Amy Ho:
Yeah, I developed that recipe during late summer when blueberries were in season here in BC. And I had an abundance of it, and I was like, why don't we make our own blueberry ice cream with some jasmine, because that sounds like the perfect celebrate the end of summer dessert.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then the other recipe I wanted you to tell us about is the no bake cherry blossom jelly cheesecake, which I saw on Instagram first, and then I saw it on your blog and you've said you've been working on that recipe for years.
Amy Ho:
I feel like one of the main selling points of Vancouver and VC is cherry blossom season during March and April. The cherry blossom trees here are so beautiful. It's such a beautiful time of the year and cherry blossoms are actually edible. So I made this cherry blossom cheesecake during cherry blossom season to be festive and seasonal. So it's like a no big cheesecake with cream cheese, heavy cream gelatin, but what makes it so special is a cherry blossom jelly layer that sits on top of the cheesecake. It's like a clear, light pink jelly studded with cherry blossom petals. You can use fresh cherry blossom petals that you forage and wash, but you can also make this throughout the year by buying cherry blossom tea. And blooming the tea in hot water and then taking the petals from the tea for your cheesecake. And yeah, it took quite a few tries, almost years to develop because there are so many times where my cheesecake did not set enough or I did not use enough gelatin for the cheesecake.
And then when you un-mold it, the jelly layer just kind of crushes the cheesecake layer and it just spills out. So I've had so many cheesecake disasters that still tasted great. But it took a while to get the perfect ratio of cream cheese to heavy cream to gelatin to make sure that cheesecake layer can support the heavier jelly layer on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Amy. And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Amy Ho:
Thank you so much for having me.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Plugrà Premium European style butter and California Prunes for their support. Don't forget to subscribe to She's My Cherry Pie on your favorite podcast platform, and tell your baking buddies about us. Be sure to check out our other episodes and get tips and tricks for making the most popular baked goods around from birthday cake to biscuits to blondies. She's My Cherry Pie, is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network and is recorded at CityVox Studio in Manhattan. Our producers are Kerry Diamond and Catherine Baker. Our associate producer is Jenna Sadhu, and our editorial assistant is Londyn Crenshaw. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.