If you haven’t noticed, my ice cream maker has been working overtime: shortbread ice cream, sweet corn ice cream, strawberry matcha ice cream, along with many other flavours that will slowly but surely appear on the blog despite ice cream season slowly coming to an end. To me, ice cream season is just a state of mind even if the weather outside begs to differ. These ice cream mooncakes prove that as long as your heart is in it (and that your ice cream maker is still in it), ice cream can be made anytime of the year. It’s Mid-Autumn (based on the lunar calendar) in a few days and we’re still out here making our ice cream maker work. Of course, you can always use your favourite store-bought ice cream to make ice cream mooncakes and just follow the recipe for the snowskin wrapper.
I haven’t revisited the idea of ice cream mochi or ice cream mooncakes in a quite a long time. The first few times I made it, it ended up being quite a stressful experience but please don’t let my mistakes deter you from making your own. Where I went wrong before is that I didn’t keep everything cold. Ice cream melts (duh) and it tends to melt even faster when you’re stressed and have to record everything for a blog post (it senses fear). After I kept every component in the freezer (the muffin pan! the sheet pan! the metal spoons! the ice cream scoop!), it was actually not that difficult to manage. As long as you have good time management skills (which I lack sometimes) and plan out your day in advance, you will be celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival with the most perfect ube ice cream mooncakes.
Like with all ice cream recipes, you want to make prep the creme anglaise (or ice cream base) the day before you want to churn the ice cream so that it has enough time to properly chill. I personally like to give myself two days to prep ice cream and the third day is for assembling and enjoying, but you can easily make the recipe in a day and half’s time. Here is how I like to breakdown my days so it is stress-free and actually get to enjoy the fruits mooncakes of my labour:
Day 1: make ube ice cream base and allow it to chill overnight
Day 2: churn ice cream based on the instructions of your ice cream maker, allow ice cream to firm up in freezer for a few hours, portion out ice cream into individual scoops in a muffin pan and allow those to firm up in freezer overnight
Day 3: make snowskin dough and assemble ice cream mooncakes
Snowskin mooncake dough will be sticky (it’s basically fresh mochi) so having excess glutinous rice flour by your side is key. Toasted glutinous rice flour is key for dusting because we’re not baking these mooncakes. If you can’t find toasted rice flour at the store, you can easily make it yourself by cooking glutinous rice flour on a dry pan over low heat for 8 – 10 minutes. The rice flour should be a very pale golden colour when it’s ready. Use the toasted glutinous rice flour on your hands and your work surface to prevent the dough from sticking and tearing. It’s also important to properly dust your mooncake press with it as well so the mooncake doesn’t tear when you’re shaping it.
Like ice cream mochi, these ice cream mooncakes can be stored in an airtight container to be enjoyed at a later time. Simply let the ice cream mooncake thaw a little at room temperature so the wrapper is not as hard. I do think they are best when you first assembly them, so always treat yourself to one when you’re making them.
Ube Ice Cream Mooncake
Equipment
- Ice cream maker
- large (75g or 100g) mooncake press
Ingredients
Ube Pandan Ice Cream
- 3 large egg yolks
- 300 ml heavy cream
- 150 ml coconut milk
- 90 g granulated sugar
- 1/2 tsp ube extract
- 1/2 tsp pandan extract
- 1/2 tsp kosher salt
Snowskin Dough
- 85 g glutinous rice flour
- 20 g tapioca flour , okay to sub with cornstarch
- 45 g icing sugar
- 180 g unsweetened full-fat coconut milk
- 15 g vegetable oil
- food colouring of choice
- toasted glutinous rice flour, for dusting
Instructions
Ube Pandan Ice Cream
- In a medium pot or sauce pan over medium heat, whisk together heavy cream, coconut milk, granulated sugar, ube extract, pandan extract, and salt. Whisk until mixture reaches a very light simmer.
- In a large bowl, while whisking the egg yolks, slowly pour the hot milk mixture into the yolks. Once all the mixture has been whisked into the bowl, return the mixture to the pot over low heat.
- Using a rubber spatula, stir the mixture constantly and cook the mixture until it thickens and coats the back of a spoon.
- Remove from heat and transfer the ice cream base to the refrigerator to chill until it is completely cold, preferably overnight.
- Once thoroughly chilled, churn the ice cream based on the instructions of your ice cream maker.
- Line a muffin pan with liners. Using an ice cream scoops, portion 10 scoops of ice cream into the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and transfer to the freezer to firm up for at least 2 hours.
Snowskin Dough
- In a medium bowl, whisk together glutinous rice flour, tapioca flour and icing sugar. Add coconut milk and vegetable oil and whisk until smooth. Add food colouring if using. (*Colour of mixture will become darker after cooking)
- In a large pot fitted with a steaming rack, bring water to a boil. Place bowl with snowskin dough mixture on the steaming rack. Steam on medium-low heat for 20 – 25 minutes, until mixture becomes translucent.
- Remove bowl from steaming rack. Using a rubber spatula, stir the mixture for several minutes until the mixture is glossy and smooth.
- Transfer dough to a plate and cover with saran wrap. Knead for several minutes until the surface becomes oily. Alternatively you can do this with food safe gloves.
- Form the dough into a disc and refrigerate for at least two hours before assembling the snow skin mooncake. A warm dough is too sticky to handle.
- Once chilled, divide the dough into 10 equal portions
Assembly
- Dust one portion of snowskin dough with toasted glutinous rice flour. Roll out the snowskin dough until it becomes a circle roughly 2 inches in diameter.
- Add one portion of ice cream in the centre and working quickly, pinch together the seams so the ice cream is fully covered.
- Dust a large mooncake mold (75g or 100g) with toasted glutinous rice flour and press the mooncake mold against the table to shape the mooncake. Carefully remove from the mold. If any sides of the mooncake is too tacky, brush on additional toasted glutinous rice flour.
- Transfer the shaped mooncakes into an airtight container to the freezer immediately and continue with remaining portions.
- Mooncakes are best when freshly made while the wrapper is still a bit soft, but can also be enjoyed later by letting the mooncake thaw out a room temperature for a minute so the wrapper can soften.
![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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