Nutella filled mooncakes

8 September 2014- 

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

We've learned that mooncakes are part of the tradition that goes along with this Chinese holiday.  

We've tried purchasing and eating mooncakes in the past.  Some were good…some were edible …but many were just down right awful (sorry, I just don't find cakes filled with fish paste to be delicious).  That is largely due to the fact that we couldn't ask what the cakes were filled with.  Or we could ask but we might not understand the answer!

I've decided to take matters into my own hands and make my own!  That means I can fill them with whatever I WANT ….and what I want to try is Nutella (chocolate hazelnut spread).  Yum!

I found several recipes online but this is the one I actually followed as it seemed easier, he explained the steps, and -most importantly – I had all the ingredients.  Instead of the coconut filling (which I bet would taste good too!) I used Nutella.

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After making the dough according to the recipe's instructions I rolled out one small chunk of dough at a time.  Next I carefully oiled and floured the molds (so that I might have some chance of releasing the cakes from their molds).  Then I carefully pushed the flattened piece of dough into the mold (making sure that it went up the sides of the mold).  In go several spoonfuls of Nutella.  (mmmmmm!!!! and maybe eat a spoonful of Nutella.  Just maybe.) Last, roll out another tiny piece of dough, place on top of the filling and seal the cake shut.  

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I greased and floured the molds THOROUGHLY …which made the cakes pop out of the mold (thank goodness!).  

Check out the tray of mooncakes (almost ready to be baked):

Mooncake dough, one of my mooncake molds, Mark's first attempt at forging/creating a knife (it's actually useful!), and a small Chinese rolling pin (I think these are used too make jiaozi):

The top of the cakes were brushed on top with an egg wash and then baked.

Did I mention that I own lots of wooden mooncake molds? How many do I have?  Hang on…let me go count them.

………..

I have ten molds.  

When I've had some Chinese friends come over for a visit they've noticed these molds AND apparently I have a LOT of them.  ;-)  I like them!  I'm trying to build a collection of them as they're quite beautiful in their simple and utilitarian way.  

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And the mooncakes I made? Well, they were quite tasty and they were eaten up quickly.  Maybe next year I'll try making them again and changing things up a bit (different fillings).  

🙂