mooncakes galore

This past weekend was the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival (learn all about here), and it's mostly all about the mooncakes. In years past, I had always purchased pre-made mooncakes from the market and never really thought about how to actually make a mooncake. Well, my friends and I learned how to make mooncakes this year and we had a great time making them.

I don't know the exact ingredients that go into the mooncake dough, but below are just pictures of what the process consists of.

mooncake dough

mooncake filling - mixture of nuts

mooncake filling -- ground meat

mooncake filling - red bean

First, you have to shape the filling into a small round ball.

Then, you put the ball of filling into a flat piece of dough. Shape the dough to completely cover the filling, forming a larger size ball of dough.

Then you put the dough (with filling inside) into this yellow contraption that makes the shape of the mooncake, and out pops the mooncake and seen below.

This is me patting down the dough inside the yellow contraption.

I was at the end of the mooncake making line so I was in charge of popping out the mooncakes onto the baking sheets.
I'm not sure how long you bake the mooncakes for, but below is a picture of the mooncakes after it's done baking. Each mooncake is cut into fours here because we were about ready to serve it to a group of about 75 people.

Now, if I only knew the exact recipe and where to get that yellow mooncake contraption, I can make my own from now on!