Making the Mooncake with friends is fun!

Mid-Autumn festival is a big festive for kids in Asia, it’s held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the lunar calendar with a full moon at night. And Mooncakes are prepared for this festival, usually month before! The Mid-Autumn festival symbolizes the family reunion, friends gathering and on this day, people will appreciate the moon in the evening, when the moon is at its fullest.

The Moon cake we made and the corner to enjoy the Moon

There is a beautiful myth about the Mid-Autumn festival, I was told when I was a little kid – a touching story about “Chị Hằng” as wife and “chú Cuội” as husband, by mistake of “chị Hằng”, the couple was forced to fly to the Moon, together with “cây đa” – the tree of immortality and stuck there forever! I did believe in the myth, as being a little kid, I always look at the Moon at its fullest, during the festival, try to look for them with the tree…and I saw it with my imagination!

**The ingredients only for the filling, 13 in the picture, it should be more than 13!**

Today, with some friends, we are going to make a special Mooncake filled with a dozen of ingredients, we call it “thập cẩm”,i.e ten ingredients! Actually it’s 13 in total! Ok, time to meet our friends!

027 — Let’s meet our friends today – we have **Mom** who is standing with the phone and we have **Yoga Guru** doing the egg wash for Moon cakes

and we still have Artist on the left and a little girl named Luang!

The Mid-Autumn festival is around the corner, it’s mostly for kids but as adult we also love to involve just to remember how beautiful is our golden time – the childhood! Making the cake is one of most favorite activities during these days and home-made is always more appreciated!

Mom and Guru are shaping the cake while Artist does his favorite job – “painting” the cake!

Don’t forget our little Luang who is very curious about what we are doing

There are two delicate works while making the Mooncake – the egg wash and baking, it requires a lot of patience. We do the egg wash as we color carefully a picture with many details, if too much egg wash, the details of the ornament on the cake are gone! Baking the cake also, in three times, with different timing and different temperature!

Luang keeps asking Artist “Can I try it, Uncle?”

She got a “Yes” from Artist and she feel so excited to hold the brush

Look! How Luang is passionate about her first work with Mooncake!

Baking the Moon cake and doing egg wash are quite delicate so our Artist and little Luang very careful!

The good Mooncake requires a very thin outer

Making Mooncakes still requires the precise weight of the filling and the outer dough

Depends on the weight of the cake, we have to divide how much for the outer dough and the rest for the filling, the thinner outer the better. Our cake weights 130 gr., so the outer dough should be between 40-42 gr. and the filling – 88-90 gr.

Shaping is also not an easy work, how to cover the big filling with very thin outer dough!

but most exciting work – moulding the cake

It took us nearly three hours to bake 29 pieces of Mooncakes, unlike the other cakes, the Mooncake is ready to serve not right after the oven, but at least 2 or 3 days later, when the cake becomes soft, moisture and a flavorfully oily!