Random thoughts on baking and hand carving

Mooncakes, embracing a bright red “moon” in their hearts, are the cakes of reunion days, the days when grandparents sip tea with their parents, and children trot about carrying lanterns to meet Hang Nga. Making mooncakes seems simple, just kneading the dough, but it is not easy. Not to mention measuring the flour and sugar, if you want to make your first mooncake, you have to start by… choosing a mold.

Among the colorful plastic molds and the industrial production line system, the traditional cake mold is still the type that produces the most delicate mooncakes. Each wooden mold is a unique one, hand-carved, chiseled and shaped for many hours. The wood chosen is always good, durable, termite-resistant, and soft enough to carve delicate lines. The cake mold carver must first be good at carpentry and carving, and then must know the cake making profession. A slight deviation will cause the pattern to be different and uneven. If the mold is carved deeply, the cake will be thick, if it is carved shallowly, the cake will be thin. Therefore, making a wooden mold is very elaborate, only kitchens specializing in handmade cakes, or people with extremely high requirements for the product dare to invest in such an expensive wooden mold.

After choosing the mold, it is time to prepare the cake. Moon cakes now also vary from salty to sweet, from baked moon cakes to snow moon cakes or jelly moon cakes. The most familiar is still the mixed filling cake according to grandma's traditional recipe, including ingredients such as Chinese sausage, lean meat, lard, peanuts, sesame... When eating moon cakes, the most attractive thing is the salted egg yolk in the middle, with a shimmering orange-yellow color, soaked in Mai Que Lo wine and grilled, eating fragrant and fatty.

To make mooncakes, you have to cook the sugar syrup for a month before baking (at least 2 weeks). Cook the sugar with water, add lemon, malt and lye water. The longer the sugar syrup is left, the darker and thicker it becomes. When you spread it on the cake, you get a batch of fragrant, softer cakes with a beautiful golden brown color. The traditional mixed fillings, in the 90s, were often a fear for children, because of the pungent smell of oil, strangely sweet with salty fillings. Mixed mooncakes are much more delicious now, because people no longer save by adding a lot of sugar and cooking oil (to preserve them longer). They are still made from all kinds of classic ingredients such as Chinese sausage, lard, roasted peanuts, white sesame, pumpkin jam, lotus seeds, lemon leaves... Grind them together, add Mai Que Lo wine, then roll them into round balls to make the filling. The cake crust is made from flour, eggs, sugar syrup, usually weighing only half the weight of the filling. Use your hands or a rolling pin to flatten the dough, so that the dough covers 2/3 of the filling, then use your hands to rotate and rub the dough so that the dough hugs the filling tightly. This way, you won't create an air gap between the filling and the dough.

Mooncakes are not difficult to make, but they require a lot of patience and preparation time. Even when baking, each cake must go through 2-3 baking cycles before having a shiny golden brown crust, with delicate patterns, representing the good things of the reunion day.

Text: Phan Cac Truc

Photos: Kira Creative & Nha Coi

The Thanh