Happy Mid-Autumn Festival: 紫薯菊花酥 (Purple Sweet Potato flower Pastry)

I want to take this opportunity to wish one and all a

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

祝福中秋佳节快乐，月圆人圆事事圆满

I believe by now, most of us whom want to make mooncakes, would have already made them. Nicely boxed up and given away or enjoyed together with your family members. ;) To most of the food bloggers, this month is particularly a busy one since there are quite a number of food events going on. So making time to bake mooncakes and churning out dishes to join the events can be quite challenging, well at least to me! But I am glad I still manage to bake some yummy mooncakes for my family members to enjoy. :)

Today I would like to share with everyone something new, perhaps not your usual mooncake recipe, at least not in this part of our world. A pastry made in the shape of a flower, particularly Chrysanthemum, and thus the name 紫薯菊花酥.

When I saw this recipe from Carol 自在生活,'s book "麵點新手必備的第一本書". I immediately fell in love with it! It's so pretty, what's not to love? I know, I know, it is not your usual traditional mooncake...but there is no rule as to what you can eat on this festival right? Although the recipe calls for red bean paste filling, I used purple sweet potato instead. ;) Next time I'll use orange sweet potato or pumpkin filling. :)

I made this twice, first version following the original recipe to the dot. While the second time I change the vegetable oil used in the pastry to ghee, hoping for a more flaking and golden finish to the pastry. Well, I can't say I achieved that because I still needed the egg wash to give it it's shine. Both version yield almost similar results, except that the one with ghee gave a more buttery scent. :) I will post the version using ghee, feel free to just replace it with vegetable oil which is what Carol used in her recipe.

Ingredients for Purple Sweet Potato flower Pastry (紫薯菊花酥) (makes 10)

Filling:   

200g purple sweet potato filling  (refer here for recipe)

•  Divide into 10 portions, each portion 20g. Roll round and chill for easier wrapping later.

Finishing Touches:

Some strawberry jam

egg wash

  

Water Dough: 

80g plain flour

10g powder sugar

20g ghee (can use vegetable oil)

40ml water

• Mix everything together till it comes together to form a soft dough. Divide into 10 equal portions, cover and let rest till needed.

Oil Dough: 

75g cake flour

25g ghee (can use vegetable oil)

• Mix everything together till it comes together to form a soft dough. Divide into 8 or 10 equal portions, cover and let rest till needed.
  
  
  Assembly: (pls refer to here for detail steps, its from 君之, but he uses red date filling)
• Wrap each oil dough portion inside a water dough portion and seal nicely. Repeat till all has been wrapped in.
• Then roll each round into a long flat oval. Roll it up like a swiss roll and again repeat for the rest of the doughs.
• Then roll each swiss roll into a long flat oval and again roll it up like a swiss roll. Repeat for all and set aside.
• Preheat oven to 175C and line a baking tray with parchment paper.
• Then taking a swiss rolled dough and roll it out into a round and wrap with a sweet potato filling in it, making sure it seals up nicely. Repeat till all is wrapped up. Then gently press each sealed round to form a flat disc, careful not to break the seal.
• Using kitchen scissors, snip 12 equal portion slits on the sides of the disc leaving about 1" from the center.
• Then gently place it on the baking tray. Gently turn the slit sides face up, there should be 12 "petals" for each flower. Repeat for the rest of the 9 portions.
• Brush all the mooncakes with egg wash. The place a small dollop of strawberry jam right at the center of each pastry. 
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• Bake in the oven for 16-18 minutes till the mooncakes are golden brown. Once out of the oven, you can again give it another egg wash coat to make it more shiny.
• Let cool completely then store in air tight containers or freeze them up to a month. Just thaw to room temperature when want to consume.

 I hope this pretty treat will motivate you to try it out and make it for your dear ones. My family members whom tried it all gave thumbs up on this because comparing to the traditional mooncake, this is definitely less sweet and healthier. Personally I would choose this over the normal mooncake too, heehee. :D

Okay, before I go, just want to show you all what the other cutie that I made this festival. It's the handmade piggy mooncakes! Recipe compliments from Anncco, thanks so much Ann!!

 Okay folks! Have a great celebration on Mid-Autumn festival! Cheers!