Search Results for: taro

Taro Sago Crystal Mooncakes

Flour, sugar, and leaveners might be the essentials of any pantry, but for me sago is as much as an essential as those ingredients. Sago has been a staple of family's kitchen and now mine as well. It's the main ingredient of mango sago (and all the other desserts of my sago series), my favourite version of dessert soup, as well as these kabocha salted egg yolk snowskin mooncakes I've been making for years. In my family's kitchen, sago is mostly used for crystal sago cakes, little steamed cakes filled with custard or bean paste. Sago is what makes the cakes special — because when steamed, the sago becomes translucent and chewy, ready to show off the filling that is inside of it. In my family's kitchen, the sago cakes are shaped and steamed inside a muffin pan, but for Mid-Autumn this year, I'm shaping them with a mooncake press to make sago mooncakes.

Sago pearls are not the same as tapioca pearls (commonly found in bubble tea), and can't be used interchangeably for this recipe. Sago pearls are small and white, and become completely translucent when cooked in water. Cooking the pearls completely submerged in water is the more common preparation for sago in Chinese desserts, but for these sago mooncakes, the sago pearls are first soaked in hot water, formed into a dough for the mooncakes, then steamed until they are no longer opaque. The sago pearls form a deeply satisfying chew, but what I think makes these sago mooncakes even more special is that you can see the filling of each mooncake without cutting into them. Using custard will produce a yellow sago ...

Fried Taro Balls with Salted Egg Yolk (Night Market-Style)

A large portion of the time I spent in Taipei was spent at one of their many night markets. On the second night of my trip, Ningxia Night Market was the market of choice and there were three stalls that I knew I needed to visit:

Ningxia Yue Shi Scallions Pancake (月氏激蛋蔥油餅)
For their famous egg scallion pancake with basil, which is deep fried and brushed with their special garlic sauce and optional spicy sauce. They're a little different than a traditional scallion pancake you'll find at your local Shanghainese restaurant — these ones are much larger and crisp, and a bit less doughy than its Shanghainese counterpart.Yuen Huan Pien Oyster Egg Omelette (圓環邊蚵仔煎)
There are so many oyster omelette options across the night markets but this one is perfect. The shop is Michelin recommended, busy, and loud, which is all part of the experience. The chewy and eggy pancakes are studded with fresh oysters and topped with a red sauce and fresh vegetables. Liu Yu Zi (劉芋仔蛋黃芋餅)
This stall was my main priority. They only offer two things on their menu and that's all they need because they do it so well (they're on the Michelin Bib Gourmand list). There will be a line, probably the longest one of the market, but don't let that deter you from trying one of the best bites at the Ningxia market. The line goes by quickly and you get to see the hawkers making each of the taro balls by hand during the wait. You can choose from two items: deep fried taro balls and deep fried taro balls with salted egg yolk (the latter contains pork floss). The taro is delicately crisp on the ...

Taro and Salted Egg Yolk Mooncakes 2.0

It has been several years since I published my first mooncake recipe here on the blog. The first few times I made traditional baked mooncakes, they didn't have the perfectly golden hue and the salted egg yolk almost peeked through the crust. A few years later with a many rounds of practice, I'm happy to share the better version of the first mooncake recipe — taro and salted egg yolk mooncakes. Here is what I wrote in that recipe a few years back:

Mid-Autumn Festival has always been one of my favourite holidays and this year it falls on September 24. Growing up, my mid-autumn festivals have always been filled with paper lanterns and mooncakes. I would always have family dinner on the night of mid-autumn and walk over to friends' houses to play with paper lanterns. When I was younger, I would eat mooncakes just for the salted egg yolk centre. I did not develop an appreciation for the rich and intense lotus seed filling until I got a bit older. A mooncake is not what we normally associate with the word 'cake.' It is a puck-sized dessert of an intensely rich and earthy lotus seed paste baked inside a thin, soft crust. A salted duck egg yolk in the centre of the mooncake to represent the full moon on mid-autumn. The salted egg yolk is slightly sweetened by the lotus seed filling and is the perfect combination of sweet and savoury.

The biggest difference between these mooncakes today and the mooncakes several years back is from the additional of two key ingredients: golden syrup and lye water. These two ingredients work together to create the ...

Taro Coconut Sago Dessert Soup (椰汁芋頭+芋圓西米露)

Happy Lantern Festival! Lantern Festival is celebrated on the 15th day of the first Chinese lunar month and it marks the end of the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival) period. Traditionally, people would go moon gazing and send up flying lanterns with friends and family. In addition to flying lanterns, one of the most exciting parts about the festival is eating tong yuen, or glutinous rice balls. These rice balls are filled with a sweet filling (typical black sesame paste) and served in a sweet ginger broth or a sweet fermented rice soup. My family usually serves the tong yuen in a brown sugar 'soup'. Why glutinous rice balls? The name for these glutinous rice balls has a similar pronunciation to the word for 'gathering of the family', so it is believed that eating this dessert will bring family wholeness and togetherness in the new year. Chinese New Year is all about eating auspicious foods that have names similar to themes of family, happiness, and prosperity.

Instead of serving traditional sesame-filled glutinous rice balls this year, I am adding homemade taro and yam 'balls' into one of my favourite traditional Chinese dessert soups, taro and sago pearls in coconut milk. I used my recipe for taro and yam balls, but instead of shaping them into spheres, a rolled them out with a rolling pin, and punched out heart and star shapes with cookie cutters. Because family is such an important theme during Chinese New Year, serving heart-shaped tong yuen is extra meaningful to me.

This recipe for taro coconut sago dessert soup should be ...

DIY Meet Fresh: Yam and Taro Ball Dessert

Perhaps it is because I grew up eating it a lot more, I find myself craving Chinese dessert more often than non-Chinese desserts. I always want dessert 'soups' with coconut milk, grass jelly, and cubes of fresh fruit. I will always say yes to my mom's pearl barley and bean curd dessert. And you know I will be having at least two bowls of 楊枝甘露 (chilled mango pomelo sago) during warm summer days. Most of these aforementioned Chinese desserts are often homemade and enjoyed in the comforts of my parents' home. When we are out, we opt for dessert options that are more laborious if we were to make it at home. I love frequenting dessert shops that specialize in taro desserts. Taro is very common ingredient and flavour in Chinese desserts and I am here for it. I grew up eating shaved ice with tender taro chunks and taro balls and nowadays, I always find an excuse to go to Meet Fresh or Blackball for their signature taro desserts.

Over the last few weeks, I have started making my own version of these desserts and have found so much joy learning more and more about all the different types of rice flours and starches used in Chinese sweets. Through making many batches of taro balls, yam balls, and sweet potato balls, I think I have found the ideal ratio of these root vegetables to tapioca starch. My mom loves everything taro as much I do, so I made a build-your-own dessert bowl type of situation for her for Mother's Day. The set up is exactly like the set up at Meet Fresh or Blackball — grass jelly, yam balls, ...

Taro Coconut Snowy Mooncakes

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! I did not intend on making more mooncakes this year after making the baked taro and purple yam with salted egg yolk mooncakes last weekend. I had so much taro leftover from the previous week and I found two other sets of mooncake molds, that it only seemed appropriate to be extra festive and make more mooncakes this weekend. Even though it might be a bit too late to share this recipe (though I highly encourage making these the day of Mid-Autumn), it is too good not to share.

Unlike traditional mooncakes, snowy or 'snow skin' mooncakes are not baked. Snowy mooncakes can have similar fillings as traditional mooncakes but their wrappers have a soft and chewy mochi-like consistency rather than the consistency of a pastry dough. The wrapper dough takes on whatever colour you want it to be. A teaspoon of matcha powder could be added to make a beautiful green mooncake and beetroot powder could create many shades of pink. Next year, I will make snowy matcha mooncakes filled with custard, please hold me to that.

For the mean time, I have these little gems for you. These snowy mooncakes are filled with a velvety taro and coconut mixture. The filling is encased in a soft and chewy wrapper that I coloured pink and purple to match. To achieve the marbling effect for the wrapper, simply add different types of gel food colour to the dough and mix lightly. Mix the dough until the desired marbling is achieved. Working with glutinous rice flour ...

My Best Mango Sago

It seems a bit crazy to me that despite making many, many gallons of mango sago each summer and even unofficially rebranding the warmer months as 'sago girl summer,' that I've never shared my mango sago recipe on here. If you piece meal it all together across several social media posts, you'll get the full recipe for a version of my fruit sago recipe. It's my go-to 'recipe' for the summer time and I say 'recipe' in quotations because no batch of mango sago is ever the same. There is a base recipe or formula but the beauty of mango sago, or any type of fruit sago, is that you can adapt and adjust it to become your very own mango sago recipe.

For me there are four key components to the best mango sago:

Your guide to other types of sago:

Sago is not just limited to mango. In fact, I love incorporating seasonal fruit in all my sago recipes. These are some of the other varieties of sago I've made in the last few years, ones that are worth repeating:

Corn Sago

This is one of my personal favourites because my love for corn knows no bounds. Sweet corn is my favourite summer produce and I will find ways to incorporate it into all types of desserts (like corn cookies and corn ice cream). It only seemed natural to make sweet corn sago. The base is coconut milk and oat milk, and for the mix ins, we have corn kernels, sago, and mini tang yuan (glutinous rice balls).

Peach sago

Peach sago is such a treat. Peach sago season occurs in my kitchen when local BC peaches start arriving at the ...

Everything I Made From — Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home

As an avid cookbook collector, I buy so many cookbooks right when they come out on pub day. My collection continues to grow at an exponential rate but I am rarely caught up to all the reading, let alone cook from them. At most, I'll make one or two recipes from the book. I have always dreamt of cooking my way through a cookbook for as long as I can I remember. It wasn't until the past few weeks that I committed to one book and made several recipes from it every week. It was like a little cookbook club in my apartment, and it was the most fun I've had with a new book.

For the months of April and May (which fittingly was Asian Heritage Month), I was cooking from Calvin Eng's new book, Salt Sugar MSG: Recipes and Stories from a Cantonese American Home. I haven't been to New York in a minute (manifesting that I get to visit sometime this or next year) but I've been obsessively stalking Calvin's restaurant, Bonnie's, since they opened in late 2021. I love dining out but my true weakness is a restaurant that offers their take on flavours that are nostalgic to me. Bonnie's menu is exactly that — panzanella with Chinese donut in lieu of bread with heirloom tomatoes, tinned dace fish dip, cacio e pepe noodles with fermented bean curd, and the cha siu (barbecued pork) bkrib sandwich might just make me eat meat again. A carefully arranged fruit plate will always pull at my heart strings, but not as much as a cohesive and inspired menu with Cantonese flavours and inspiration.

Here are the recipes I made each week and a little bit about the recipes from the ...

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 CrustSalted Egg Yolk Pineapple CakeTaro 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 ...

Home Sweet Hong Kong

Hong Kong is my home away from home, a travel destination that is less about having a jam-packed itinerary but reconnecting with people and places that I've missed since my last visit. It has been almost eight years since the last time I was in Hong Kong, which is the longest I've ever been away from the city. It is rare for me to not over-plan for a trip, especially a ten day one, but I knew this trip is more about having dim sum and with relatives to catch up on the last few years. I still managed to visit a few of the cafes and bakeries on my list. I ate at my grandma's home for almost my entire stay there and those were some of the best meals of my trip.

Here are some highlights from my 10 days in the city (in the order I visited them and presented in the photos below):

Food & Coffee

Elixir - my first coffee in the city was at Elixir, a very clean and sleek coffee shop in Central. Most of the coffee shops I visited are in Central and Sheung Wan (both of which have their own MTR metro stops and are in close walking distance to each other) and walking between the two neighbourhoods allowed to discover many more cafes along the way. Despite its mostly concrete interior and exterior, Elixir was actually quite a welcoming space and great spot to rest and enjoy a coffee after hours of exploration in Central. I ordered something that I normally wouldn't order, the osmanthus cold brew + tonic, and really enjoyed it. The osmanthus was perfectly fragrant and the floral notes held up really well against the coffee. It was so refreshing after spending ...

A Trip to Taiwan 2023

A trip to Taiwan is something I've always had on my wish list but not one that I thought I would check off already. I didn't know too much about Taiwan except for what my Dad told me about (he went to university there) and what I watched on Youtube about the different night market foods at Raohe and Ningxia. I went on the trip with my parents without planning too much, which is so rare for me because I usually a full, colour-coded excel sheet of restaurants organized by neighbourhood, hours of operation, and type of cuisine. Instead, I let my parents guide the trip since they've been multiple times and I had a few of spots I knew I wanted to visit sprinkled throughout. We spent five days mostly in Taipei but did take a day trip to visit Shifen and Jiufen. I haven't travelled with my parents in over a decade.. or maybe it's closer to two decades but I'm so grateful that a trip to Taiwan is one we did together. Here's how I spent five days in Taiwan:

Day 1:

We flew into Taoyuan International Airport very early into the morning, before anything was open. After we landed from the 13-hour flight, we took the train from Taoyuan into the city, which was a very scenic ride — we went through so much lush greenery and mountainscapes, something that is characteristic of Taiwan that I didn't know about before this trip. When we exited the train station, we were in the middle of a bustling city and I was immediately overwhelmed. Taipei was what I expected but also completely different at the same time? I was not surprised by how close the buildings are to each other and ...

Mooncake Molds & Presses

Compared to cookie making and cake decorating, mooncake making is relatively new to me. Despite it being a hobby of only a few years, my growing collection of mooncake tools and equipment would make one think I've been making mooncakes for at least a decade. There isn't a huge variety of mooncake molds and presses out there, but enough for it to maybe appear intimidating to newer mooncake makers.

Types of mooncake presses

There are generally two types of mooncake presses: wooden and plastic. Wooden mooncake molds are like paddles. The mooncakes are shaped into a floured mold and for the mooncake to be released, the paddle is hit against a hard surface like a table or countertop. I love the look of wooden mooncake molds, but they are less practical and a bit harder to use than newer plastic mooncake presses.

Plastic mooncake presses are my preferred mooncake shaper. Mooncake presses have a spring and plunger system, where the mooncake dough is inserted into the press and with some pressure against the table, the design will be imprinted onto the top of each mooncake. Because it has a plunger, the mooncake is released very easily. Most plastic mooncake presses come with a variety of interchangeable design plates that can be swapped and locked into the press to create a variety of mooncake patterns. The plastic is usually cream coloured but I've started seeing clear plastic presses which allows you to see the imprint being made — it's quite pretty!

Different sizes of mooncake presses

Mooncake molds come in variety of sizes but the most ...

Salted Honey Pistachio Tangyuan 湯圓 Rice Balls

My favourite thing about Lunar New Year is all the food, especially all the sweet treats that are shared among family and friends. What makes Lunar New Year sweets superior to all the other types of desserts out there is that everything! is! so! chewy! The main character of Lunar New Year celebrations is the nian gao (年糕), or new year cake, which is a steamed glutinous rice flour-based cake (which you then pan fry!) and it is the chewiest of them all. New year cake symbolizes progress and growth, making it a popular gift to give when visiting family and friends during the holiday. My family usually eats nian gao leading up to the big day but we always have a big breakfast revolving around nian gao the morning of Lunar New Year. Next is the tang yuan (湯圓) glutinous rice balls. Tang yuan have a chewy yet tender wrapper and the filling can vary from sesame paste, peanut, or custard. The circular shape of the rice balls symbolizes one’s family coming together and the name of the rice balls sound like Chinese word for reunion (tuanyuan 團圓). My love for nian gao and tang yuan knows no bounds and if I could have it my way, I would eat nian gao all year round.

Growing up, I only liked tang yuan for their wrapper. I ate tang yuan solely for the mochi-like wrapper and would scoop out the nutty fillings so that they wouldn't "ruin" the perfect texture of my beloved chewy rice ball. As I got older, I learned to appreciate how the different fillings complemented the wrapper and ate the rice balls in its entirety. I still had a preference for the the fillings though: ...

White Lotus Mooncakes with Sablé Crust

Tomorrow is Mid-Autumn Festival! Happy early Mid-Autumn! I'm done all my mooncake making for this year (I made close to 10 batches!) and I did a little recap over on Instagram last night. Besides making mooncakes leading up to Mid-Autumn and having a family dinner the night of, I don't do too much for Mid-Autumn. When I was younger, my family would join my friends' families for a lantern walk around the neighbourhood but unfortunately that was a tradition we grew out of as we grew up. This year, however, I tried my hardest to add more Mid-Autumn festivities — tonight I'm going to a show at the planetarium (!!) where they'll be projecting Mid-Autumn folklore onto the Star Theatre (!!!!!!) and tomorrow I'll visit the Chinese Garden to enjoy all the lanterns and artwork. Apparently there will also be a mooncake tasting at the gardens, so I will finally be able to eat mooncakes made by someone else other than me. I always enjoy other people's baking more than my own.

I feel like every Mid-Autumn I develop some new mooncake obsession. Three years ago, I was trying to perfect the traditional baked mooncake, while snow skin mooncakes were all I could think about the last two years. This year's mooncake obsession is sablé. I know what you're thinking... "Really Amy, sablé in mooncakes? That's not traditional." Traditional mooncakes have a softer, oil-based dough and I love that. I made several batches of mooncakes with a more traditional dough recipe but my favourite mooncakes that I made this year has to be the ones with a crisp, buttery sablé dough. The ...

Kabocha Cheesecake Cream Puffs

I feel like I'm stuck in this weird phase in between two major themed baking holidays — Halloween and Christmas. Is it too late to still share pumpkin recipes? Are we still into fall baking while slowly listening to more Christmas music everyday? Or is it okay as long as I do it before December 1? I'm going to leave you with the recipe for these kabocha cheesecake cream puffs and you can take what you need.

Kabocha squash is one of my favourite things to eat, whether it's in a sweet or savoury preparation. I had a phase in my life where I would eat the squash everyday and part of almost every meal — it was a wild time. I don't eat it nearly as much now but still really enjoy a kabocha filled chewy rice cake from one of my go-to bakeries in Chinatown, in the form a pumpkin croquette at Japanese restaurants, and my mom's kabocha cream soup whenever I go home for dinner. I also love using kabocha in a few of my recipes including kabocha salted egg yolk mooncakes during Mid-Autumn Festival, taro coconut sago dessert soup (I add cubes of kabocha!), as well as subbing kabocha for yam in these dessert cups with grassy jelly. If you have a recipe you love making that features kabocha squash, please share it with me! In the meantime, I hope you love these pumpkin-shaped kabocha cheesecake cream puffs.

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Matcha Mooncakes with Chestnut and Salted Egg Yolk

Just two more days until Mid-Autumn Festival! In previous years, I would most likely be on my second or third box of store-bought mooncakes but because celebrations are smaller this year and my family hasn't been visiting family friends and relatives, our stash of mooncakes (both gifted and bought for entertaining) in the house has been quite small. I don't really mind though because this year compared to all the past ones, I've been making a lot more mooncakes. Originally I thought I was done mooncakes for this year since I've made so many batches, but the rainy weather this weekend called for lots of baking at home. I've played with snowskin dough and traditional baked dough... but this weekend I wanted to flavour the dough and what better flavour to use than my go-to flavour for all things sweet — matcha. This recipe is based on my original baked mooncake recipe with the additional of matcha to the dough and a chestnut filling. I put a yolk in half of the mooncakes so non-yolk-lovers (I don't know why anyone would dislike a salted egg yolk centre!) could have mooncakes too. If I don't post another last minute mooncake recipe in the next two days, I wish you and your loved ones a very happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

Thank you for all the mooncake love!
Cherry Bombe
The Bake Feed
NUVO Magazine (recipe)
Food.com (recipe)
Bake From Scratch
...and to everyone that has been making my mooncake recipe and tagging me!

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Search Results for: taro

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