The Mid-Autumn Festival just happened this week on Oct 4. The weekend before we gathered together as a family to make some mooncakes.  I hope this continues as a family traditional.

As a young child I have always loved the pig shaped mooncakes.  Traditionally mooncakes are round but modern mooncakes now come in all shapes and flavors.  To make these beautiful moon cakes you need a mold.  (Well you don’t really need one but it makes it look so pretty.)The night before my mom and dad made filling.  They made red bean, black sesame and mixed nuts. They rolled the filling into balls with  salted egg yolk.

When we got to my parents house on Sunday we prepared the nut filling and the dough.  The nut filling was made by grinding a couple different nuts, rice flour, dried mixed fruit, water and a little bit of Crisco.

This was the first time we made the mooncakes so we experimented with a couple different recipes. For the dough we picked a recipe from this chinese cookbook I had at home.

The mooncake making day was a fun way to hang out with my family.

When the dough was finished it was a lot softer than we thought it would be.  We divided the dough into tiny balls. It was more of trial and error at this time since we never used this mold before.

Now that all the preparations are done we can start making the mooncakes.  This involved rolling out the dough, wrapping it around the filling, pressing it into the mold, and baking them. It was a whole family event.

After assembling the mooncakes, we baked them in the oven for about 15 minutes and then gave them a nice egg wash and baked them for another 15 minutes.  

To distinguish between the three types of mooncakes we decorated them each differently.  It made them look so pretty and legit!

I hope this ends up as a yearly tradition that we can do as a family. I had a great time making the mooncakes and celebrating the Mid-Autumn Festival.