Ice cream soda snow skin mooncakes

The hunt continues for the perfect snowskin moon cake recipe, one that remains soft and smooth even after refrigeration. Last year, I used the steaming method – they stayed soft, but after the third day in the fridge, it started to dry out and harden.

My friend Wendy tested several recipes, and came across Aunty Yochana’s rainbow ice cream soda snowskin recipe. I’ve seen this before, but was skeptical of the ice cream soda. Wendy told me her friend tested it with great results. After that, she tried it out too, and both she and her husband loved it. Most importantly it stayed soft despite the refrigeration!

So we had a mooncake making and tasting session yesterday. Visited Kwong Cheong Thye at Aljunied to shop for mooncake fillings. Seriously spoilt for choice there :p Just look!

This is only one row of fillings. There are plenty more at the sides.

The jovial and helpful uncles who joked with customers, and help divide the fillings into 500g packages if you don’t want to purchase a whole 1kg bag.

I won’t disclose how much we spent, but we happily lugged home the following – red bean, white lotus, pandan lotus, milk tea, black sesame, peach, black sugar red bean, coffee, and pu er lotus ;)

Ice cream soda snowskin mooncakes
(Adapted from Aunty Yochana’s rainbow ice cream soda snow skin mooncakes)
Makes about 12 2 inch snow skin mooncakes.

Ingredients
90g fried glutinous rice flour (Koufen)
10g wheat starch (tang mien fen)
30g shortening
40g icing sugar
150g ice cream soda, 50g water
colouring (optional)

1. Sift together the gultinous rice flour, wheat starch and icing sugar together.

2. Rub the shortening into the flour mixture.

3. Combine the ice cream soda and water (and colouring, if using), and add to the flour. Mix until a soft dough forms, and you’re done!

Coloured mooncake skins ;)

To make the mooncakes, take some filling and roll it into a ball. Use a portion of the mooncake skin and wrap it round the filling, rolling it into a ball again. Dust it with a little fried glutinous rice flour (to prevent it from sticking to the mould), press it into your mould and then knock it out. If you’re using the mooncake stamp, then just stamp your mooncake out! I can’t give the exact portions because of the different mould sizes. So just trial and error and see how much skin and filling is needed for your mould :)

For those wondering what mooncakes are, it is a sweet chinese cake / dessert eaten during the mid-autumn festival. There are a few variations of the mid-autumn story ;) For the curious minds, you can read more about them over at Wikipedia!