Musings on baking and handcrafted mold making.

Mooncakes, embracing a vibrant red moon within their center, are the cakes of reunion, the day when grandparents sip tea with parents, and children excitedly carry lanterns to meet the Moon Goddess. Making mooncakes, seemingly simple—kneading the dough and filling—is actually quite challenging. Not to mention the meticulous measuring of flour and sugar, the first step in making mooncakes is... choosing the right mold.

Amidst the diverse array of colorful plastic molds and industrial assembly line production systems, traditional wooden molds still produce mooncakes with the most exquisite details. Each wooden mold is unique, hand-carved and sculpted over many hours. The wood chosen is always high-quality, durable, resistant to termites, and soft enough to carve delicate lines. The mold carver must first be skilled in woodworking and carving, and then also knowledgeable in mooncake making. A slight misstep will result in uneven patterns. If the mold is carved too deeply, the mooncake will be thick; if carved too shallowly, it will be thin. Therefore, making a wooden mold is very elaborate, and only bakeries specializing in handcrafted mooncakes or those with extremely high standards dare to invest in such expensive wooden molds.

After choosing the molds, it's time to prepare the cakes. Mooncakes now come in a variety of flavors, from savory to sweet, from baked mooncakes to snow mooncakes or jelly mooncakes. The most familiar, however, is still the traditional mixed-filling mooncake made according to my grandmother's recipe, including ingredients like Chinese sausage, lean pork, pork fat, peanuts, sesame seeds… The most appealing part of the mooncake is the salted egg yolk in the center, with its shimmering orange-yellow color, soaked in Mai Que Lo wine and then baked, giving it a fragrant, rich, and creamy taste.

To make mooncakes, you need to cook the sugar syrup a month in advance (at least two weeks). The sugar is simmered with water, then lemon juice, malt syrup, and lye water are added. The longer the syrup sits, the darker and thicker it becomes, resulting in a fragrant, soft mooncake with a beautiful golden-brown color. The traditional mixed filling, back in the 1990s, was often a nightmare for children because of its pungent oily smell and strangely sweet taste compared to savory fillings. Modern mooncakes are much tastier because people no longer skimp on sugar and oil (for longer preservation). They still use classic ingredients like Chinese sausage, pork fat, roasted peanuts, white sesame seeds, candied winter melon, lotus seeds, and lime leaves… These are finely ground and mixed together, then mixed with Mai Que Lo rice wine and rolled into small balls for the filling. The crust, made from wheat flour, eggs, and sugar syrup, usually weighs only half the weight of the filling. Using your hands or a rolling pin, flatten the dough for the outer layer, ensuring it covers about two-thirds of the filling. Then, using your hands, gently rotate and press the dough to tightly enclose the filling. This will prevent air pockets from forming between the filling and the outer layer.

Mooncakes aren't difficult to make, but they require a lot of patience from the baker and considerable preparation time. Even during baking, each cake must go through 2-3 baking sessions before achieving a golden-brown, glossy crust adorned with intricate patterns, representing auspicious wishes for the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Text: Phan Cac Truc

Photos: Kira Creative & Nha Coi

The Thanh