Spiral Flaky Crust Lotus Mooncakes

Since I have quite an amount of lotus seed paste filling left over after making some bread, I figured putting it into good use by making some mooncakes. Okay, I'm not referring to those normal ones with the soft cookie dough brown skin mooncakes. Actually my favorite kind is those with the flaky crust...the texture almost like those of "豆沙饼" or "老婆饼", so good with the sweet or savory filling! So today I took the trouble to seat down and make these delicious treat and share it with some good friends and family. The end result? Yum-a-licious!

Frankly speaking, I always have this impression that mooncakes are really hard to make. But after going through it myself, I find them not at all difficult to make, it just needs a little more time to do the rolling and wrapping. I have adapted the recipe from one of my favorite websites, Corner Cafe which she has painstaking showed the steps on how to roll the doughs to achieve the beautiful patterns. Thanks!
I did made some changes to the recipe and here is my version:

Ingredients for Spiral Flaky Crust Lotus Mooncakes (makes 12 medium):
Water dough:
125g plain flour
60g ghee
50ml water

Oil dough:
120g cake flour
60g ghee
1 tbsp pandan juice

Filling:
250g Lotus Seed Paste
2 tbsp pandan juice
1/2 tsp pandan paste
3 salted duck egg yolks (halved)

Method:

• For the water dough, rub the ghee into the flour in a mixing bowl till it resembles bread crumbs. Then add the water and knead till it form a soft dough. Cover and set aside.
• For the oil dough, rub the ghee into the cake flour till its well combined and forms a soft dough. Add the pandan juice if desired to enhance the fragrance. Cover and set aside.
  
• For the filling, mix everything together except the salted egg yolks till well combined.
• Dive both the water dough into 6 equal portions, then do the same for the oil dough. For details on rolling out the dough, please kindly link to Corner Cafe to see the step by step instructions.
• After you have did the spiral layering dough, you can proceed to put the filling in. If you are adding salted egg yolks, place half of the yolk inside some lotus paste filling before putting the lotus paste into the prepared dough and sealing it up. Remember to mark those which salted yolks has been added. I used red food coloring to dot the top.
  
• Repeat till all doughs has been used. Place mooncakes on baking tray lines with parchment paper and preheat oven to 200°C.
• Brush egg wash over the mooncakes and bake in oven for 20 minutes till golden brown.
• Cool on rack before cutting the mooncakes.

When they were baking in the oven, the fragrant pandan smell filled the whole house, it was superb! I was so glad that I added the pandan paste & juice, it really gave it a nice aroma...much better then plain old taste.











A shot of the insides of these delicious cakes. If you ask me, I much prefer the ones with the salted egg yolks, it balance out the sweetness. Overall, I am very satisfied with the end result of these mooncakes, considering I am making them for the first time. Even friends that I share them with has commented its very good. I guess the only thing I would change the next time I make these mooncakes is to use yam paste filling, another of my faourite! ;)