I am deep into mooncake making and we’re in the final stretch before the big day. Mid-Autumn Festival is in five days (umm why does time go by so quickly) and I feel like I’m running out of time to share all the mooncakes I’ve been making this season. My mooncake world has been an exciting one this year:
- Cherry Bombe invited me to be a guest on their baking podcast, She’s My Cherry Pie, and I got to geek out about all things mooncakes with the wonderful Jessie Sheehan. You can listen to it here!
- I got a bunch of new mooncake presses and molds this year (like this snoopy one) and my collection is growing at an exponential rate
- I started playing with coloured mooncake dough (natural powders like matcha and strawberry as well as gel food colouring) and I’m surprised I haven’t done it sooner? I’m so proud of these apple tree mooncakes even though I was so close to having a meltdown while making the tiiiiiny apples
- I made blue skies jelly mooncakes and they quickly became the most popular mooncakes I’ve shared this year
I’ve been sharing all types of mooncakes the last few years but a jelly mooncake being the most popular mooncake wasn’t something I would’ve predicted to be on my 2023 Mid-Autumn bingo card. I’ve made jelly mooncakes here and there for fun but it was never something I’ve taken as seriously as perfecting my sablé cookie crust on my baked mooncakes. Jelly mooncakes are far from traditional, but a fun option for Mid-Autumn.
I made two jelly mooncakes this year — a green apple-flavoured jelly mooncake that’s light blue with little coconut milk clouds and a peach jelly mooncake with two jelly egg yolks in the centre. Salted egg yolks are my favourite part of eating a traditional baked mooncake, so I knew I wanted to recreate it in jelly form. I used the same base recipe for both these mooncakes and changed the flavouring and colouring based on the theme. Feel free to use this recipe as a starting point for your jelly mooncakes and add any flavours or shapes you you like!
Jelly Mooncakes
Ingredients
Jelly Clouds (or 'Egg Yolks')
- 6 g (1 packet) gelatin powder , I used Knox brand
- 200 ml coconut milk , or milk of choice
- 30 g granulated sugar
- A few drops food colouring if using
Jelly Mooncake Base
- 18 g (3 packets) gelatin powder, I used Knox brand
- 600 ml (2 1/2 cups) hot water
- 100 g (1/2 cup) granulated sugar
- A few drops of candy flavouring of choice, I used green apple and peach
- A few drops food colouring if using
Instructions
Jelly Clouds (or 'Egg Yolks')
- Empty a packet of gelatin powder is large liquid measuring cup. Set aside.
- Add coconut milk into a small pot, heat over medium heat until it reaches a gentle simmer. Ladle a small portion of the hot coconut milk (about 3 – 4 tablespoons) into the measuring cup with gelatin powder. Whisk until all the gelatin has dissolved.
- Add the remainder of the coconut milk to the measure cup and whisk to combine
- Add granulated sugar and mix until dissolved. If using food colouring to make the 'egg yolks,' add it a few drops at this point. If making jelly clouds, leave the mixture white.
- Pour mixture into a silicone cloud mold or sphere ice cube tray and transfer to refrigerator to set.
- *This recipe will make more than you need, but this amount is needed to fill a sphere mold/ice cube tray
Jelly Mooncake Base
- Start jelly mooncake base once jelly clouds/spheres have set.
- Empty a packet of gelatin powder is large liquid measuring cup. Set aside.
- Heat up water in a medium pot until it reaches a boil. Ladle a small portion of the hot water (about 1/4 cup) into the measuring cup with gelatin powder. Whisk until all the gelatin has dissolved.
- Add remaining hot water and granulated sugar to the measuring cup, whisk until fully dissolved.
- Add a few drops of candy flavouring and food colouring to the mixture.
- Allow mixture to come to room temperature before pouring into mold and adding clouds/spheres from first step. If you add the clouds/spheres while mixture is warm or hot, it will melt into the jelly mooncake base.
- If making blue skies jelly mooncakes: pour a thin layer of blue jelly base into plastic/silicone mooncake mold. Transfer to the refrigerator and allow to chill for 20 – 30 minutes. This will create the first layer of the sky. Once set, add jelly clouds. When placing the clouds, you want to place the 'right side' down (the puffy sides of the cloud will be away from you). Once you've positioned the clouds, add the remaining blue jelly to the fill the mold.
- If making 'double egg yolk' mooncakes: place two jelly yolks directly into the mold. Fill the mold with jelly base mixture.
- Transfer jelly to the refrigerator to set completely, at least 4 hours.
- To remove jelly mooncakes from mold, dip the mold into a pan of warm water for about 15 seconds. Tap against the table to release.
![day two: sparkly matcha neapolitan shortbread cookies ✨
the instructions might seem confusing, but if you watch the video to see how the different flavour layers are stacked, it will make much more sense! these slice and bake cookies freeze extremely well so you can make the dough now and bake them off when you want to gift them. (makes 40-44)
vanilla dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
1/4 tsp salt
matcha dough:
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g (6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tsp culinary matcha powder
1/4 tsp salt
strawberry dough
85g (1/3 cup + 2 tsp) unsalted butter, room temp
45g 6 tbsp) powdered sugar
90g (3/4 cup) all-purpose flour
2 tbsp freeze-dried strawberry powder
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg white
coarse sanding sugar
for the vanilla dough, combine butter and powdered sugar in a bowl. mix until smooth. add vanilla. add flour and salt and mix until no dry streaks remain. do the same for the matcha and strawberry doughs in separate bowls
place one portion of the dough between two pieces of parchment paper and roll into a 5 x 9-inch rectangle that is about 1/4-inch thick. slide rolled out dough onto a baking sheet and freeze for 10 min until firm. repeat this step with the other portions of dough
remove the top piece of parchment from each slab and stack the strawberry, vanilla, and matcha dough layers. cut the slab down the middle the long way to form two 2.5 x 9-inch rectangles. with one half, carefully swap the order of the layers (example: if the first half of the dough is stacked svm, swap the second half so it’s msv. this will ensure that same flavour squares don’t stack on each other). stack the halves. press the layers gently to adhere them. return the stacked dough to the freezer for another 10min
[recipe cont’d in comments]
#christmasbaking #christmascookies #holidaybaking #holidaycookies #cookiedecorating](https://constellationinspiration.com/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)
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