JanerBlog

MMmmMMMmmMooncakes!

So September 18th is the Harvest Moon Festival, celebrated by all our Chinese buddies. I am too damn lazy and/or busy to make actual Chinese Mooncakes this year, but I still wanted to use my cool mooncake mold.

So I made Scottish Chinese Shortbread Mooncakes. Yum!

Ingredients:

Jar of jam, the thicker the better.
Pound of unsalted butter, the fresher the better. Buy it the day you make the cakes, if you can.
5 cups white pastry flour
1 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon vanilla

Cream the butter. Add sugar, salt, vanilla slowly, then add the flour one cup at a time.

Heavily flour the inside of the wooden mooncake mold, then turn over and tamp out the excess.

Pack a golfball-size wad of the dough into the mooncake mold, and shape it up the sides, leaving a hollow depression in the middle of the mold. Make sure that there's at least 1/4 inch of dough on the bottom of the mold. Spoon jam into the hollow. Take a smaller piece of dough and flatten it into a disc the same size and shape as the top of the mooncake mold. Press this down gently, compacting the cake into the mold. Trim off excess dough with your fingers and return it to the bowl.

Turn the mooncake mold over, gently, with one hand cupped underneath the cake. Give the far end of the mooncake mold a smart whack on your countertop and the cake should fall out neatly into your palm. Gently transfer the cake to a well-greased cookie sheet -- the cakes are very soft and fragile so be careful not to distort them -- and give each cake about an inch of space on all sides in case they decide to expand. Reflour the mold at this point -- it's essential that you flour the mold after each cake.

Bake at 350F for 35-45 minutes or until the edges of the cakes turn golden brown.

Makes about 15 cakes.