Baked Red Yeast Rice Mooncake with Pandan Mung Bean and Lotus Paste Fillings

Red yeast rice is a bright reddish purple fermented rice. It is used mainly by the Chinese and to certain extent the Japanese and Korean to impart colour to food. Although it is mainly used for its colour, it does have a very subtle taste to it and is commonly used in cuisine of Fujian province in China. Apart from its culinary usage, red yeast rice also have health property. It is used in traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to invigorate body, revitalise blood and aid in digestion.

I once tasted a red yeast rice mooncake. Since I am making mooncakes as gifts, I wanted them to look colourful. So I decided to look for the recipe for red yeast rice mooncakes to be part of my gift packs. The only post on red yeast rice mooncakes' recipe I found online is in Chinese. Here is the site. I can't read Chinese. So, what I did was to translate the post to English. I have to be very careful in reading posts translated by Google as I know they are not very accurate. I have once tried to translate a recipe sent by a friend from Chinese to English. When I read it, I felt that it was quite hilarious. Apparently, one of the ingredient is fuel. So, I thought it might be cooking oil. When I read the recipe again, I realised that there already is cooking oil in the ingredient list. In the end, I waited for dear hubby to come back and asked him to translate for me. Can you guess what it is? Oyster sauce! Yes you heard me right, it is oyster sauce. Hahaha!

I was only looking for the mooncake dough/pastry recipe. The filllings are pretty standard. So I took the recipe from the abovementioned site as reference. After the translation, I found it to be quite weird as it does not have any lye water in it. All mooncake's pastry should have lye water as its function is to balance the acidity of the golden syrup. It calls for baking soda instead. I guessed the baking soda is supposed to be lye water. I used lye water instead of baking soda as translated by Google. I halved the recipe as I only need roughly 246g of dough for 6 standard size mooncake.

Bakd Red Yeast Rice Mooncake with Pandan Mung Bean and Lotus Paste Fillings

Make 6 standard size mooncakes

Ingredients:

125 g all purpose flour

10 g red yeast rice powder

85 g golden syrup

25 g peanut oil

1/2 tsp lye water

264 g pandan mung bean paste

240 g lotus paste

A handful of toasted melon seeds

Method:

1. Mix golden syrup, peanut oil and lye water together. Stir till well blended.

2. Sift flour and red yeast rice powder into a big bowl.

3. Make a well in the centre. Pour in the golden syrup mixture.

4. Mix into a soft dough and set aside for at least 30 minutes to rest (I wrapped with cling film and left it overnight in the fridge).

5. Add pre-toasted melon seeds into the lotus paste. Refer to my previous post here on how to add them in.

6. Divide lotus paste into 6 balls of 40g each and pandan mung bean paste into 6 balls of 44g each.

7. Flatten a ball of pandan mung bean paste into a disc. Place a lotus paste ball in the centre of the disc and wrap it up. Roll into a ball. Repeat for the rest of the paste.

8. Divide the dough into 6 balls of  roughly 41g each.

9. Take a ball of dough and flatten it into a disc. Place a ball of filling in the centre and wrap it up. Roll into a ball and place it into the mould. Press firmly to conform to mould and then unmould. Place the unbaked mooncake on a lined baking tray. Repeat for the rest of dough.

10. Bake in preheated oven at 170ºC for 12 minutes. Remove from oven to cool for 15 minutes and then bake again for another 15 minutes.

11. Leave to cool completely before storing in airtight container.

12. Mooncakes will turn soft and shiny after 2 to 3 days.