老婆餅 Wintermelon (‘Wife Cake’) Mooncakes

With Mid-Autumn Festival being exactly one week away, welcome to the first mooncake recipe of the year. I intended to start my mooncake recipe series by earlier this year but I’ve been so busy making the recipes from previous years to give to friends and family. These are the ones that are part of the regular rotation:

• White Lotus Paste and Salted Egg Yolk Mooncakes with Sablé Crust
• Salted Egg Yolk Pineapple Cake
• Taro Coconut Snowskin Mooncakes

In between batches of these mooncakes, I’ve been occupied by making my way to Chinatown to buy candied wintermelon to make this year’s mooncakes: a hybrid between a wife cake and mooncake. A wife cake, sometimes known as a sweetheart cake, is a Chinese bakery classic with a delicate flaky pastry filled with wintermelon, almond or coconut, glutinous rice flour, and sesame. The filling is sticky, slightly chewy, and translucent. Traditionally, the pastry of a wife cake is a combination of a water dough and an oil dough, laminated to create many delicate layers. For these mooncakes, we’re making a classic wintermelon filling and it’s baked inside a buttery sablé, shortbread-like, crust.

What is wintermelon?

Wintermelon is a very mild-tasting fruit (!) that is often used as a vegetable in Chinese cooking. Growing up, I primarily had wintermelon in two ways — in a soup for a savoury preparation and as wife cakes in a sweet preparation. Wintermelon can be found year round at most Chinese grocery stores, but for wife cakes, candied wintermelon is the main ingredient. Candied wintermelon comes in strips, and the flesh of the candied fruit is almost translucent with a powdery and sugary coating. Some Chinese grocery stories will sell candied wintermelon during Lunar New Year, but I have better luck finding candied wintermelon at Chinese herbalist shops other times of the year. Candied watermelon (instead of fresh wintermelon) is necessary for wife cakes because a lot of its moisture has been removed and the sugary coating of the candied wintermelon is what contributes to the sweetness of the filling. You can candy your own wintermelon for making wife cakes, but it’s much more convenient to buy already candied wintermelon.

What is inside wife cake filling?

Wife cake filling is made of candied wintermelon, toasted sesame seeds, desiccated coconut, cooked glutinous rice flour, and a bit of water. The candied wintermelon gets finely chopped (or blended in a food processor) until it forms a paste before it’s mixed with the other ingredients. The amount of water needed depends on the batch of candied wintermelon. Older candied wintermelon tends to be drier while fresher candied wintermelon has greater moisture content. When working with drier wintermelon, you won’t need as much water for the filling to come tighter. The consistency of the filling should be firm yet soft enough to leave a finger print when you press on it. It will be slightly tacky and sticky, but not too wet where you lose a lot of filling when rolling it into a ball. The cooked glutinous rice flour helps absorb some of the moisture in the filling, but most importantly it helps the filling achieve an almost mochi-like texture. The texture of wife cakes is my favourite thing about the pastry.

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