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Home » Chinese spiral moon cake » Chinese Spiral Moon Cake (Teochew style mooncakes) with Savory Mung Bean Filling; IFC challenge 1

Chinese Spiral Moon Cake (Teochew style mooncakes) with Savory Mung Bean Filling; IFC challenge 1

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 I am food enthusiast who dreams to emulate Antony Bourdianor to do similar work sometime in the future. I know it is not possible in the near future but I will definitely try when time permits. So right now I try various cuisines in my small kitchen with my own input to make it suitable to my family’s taste buds. I like to take part in various challenges and when I saw the challenge to make either spiral moon cake, scallion pancake with wonton soup or sweet or sour Cantonese chicken from International Food Challenge created bySaraswathi and  Shobana .I decided to give moon cake a try.

I have already tried Chinese scallion pancake, and wonton soup with mushroom and I am in love with them, and do it once in a while. So decide to try this spiral moon cake. However original recipe for the moon cake was to make sweet potato filling. Nowadays if say I sweet, hubby will run from the kitchen in split of seconds, still when I make sweets he would try it in a small portion. So I decide to make it savory filling with moong/mung bean so that he can also enjoy guilt free.  
On researching a little bit about spiral moon cake, I came to know that this is a regional variety, but not the traditional Chinese moon cake that is eaten during autumn moon festival. This year it is on September 19th 2013. There are two different kinds of moon cakes, one is chewy that is traditional and other one is flaky. Chaoshan(Teochew-style mooncake)s a flaky crust variety, and is larger in size than the Suzhou variety. It is close in diameter to the Cantonese style, but thinner. A variety of fillings are used, but the aroma of lard after roasting is dominant. Suzhou–style mooncake is the oldest version of moon cakes which has sweet and savory filling, and is also known for its flaky dough and generous allotment of sugar and lard. Within this regional type, there are more than a dozen variations. It is also smaller than most other regional varieties. You are interested in reading about moon cakes read from here and here.
I saw this blog post and was amazed by the layers she got.  I did not want to use lard, and the next choice was to use shortening, so I tried with vegetable shortening, and since it has no taste of its own, I also used a little butter to make the pastry flaky. However it is not as flaky as I wished. For the filling, I used yellow split peas/moong beans, green onion, onion and chili flakes, I added little cumin too. My daughter likes blue color, so I used blue color to make this moon cake. Outer covering is made with two kinds of dough, water dough which consists of flour, water, butter and shortening and oil dough which consists of cake flour, shortening and butter. Later two of them get mixed together and warp in a particular pattern to get flaky layers. Instead of frying as traditional one opted for baking, I was able to get layers  After 35-40 minutes of baking at 350 °F they turned out to be crispy on outer and filling made flavorful. They are at their prime when they come out from the oven. As they sit outside they lose their charm and by next day they become rancid. 
 If you are very curious to know the taste only try it, otherwise you can skip it and look for one any Chinese bakeries for the traditional version.


Chinese Spiral Moon Cake (Teochew style mooncakes) with Savory Moong Bean Filling
Preparation time: 45 minutes
Baking time: 40 minutes
Yield: 6 moon cake

Print Recipe
Ingredients
Water dough
75g /1/2 cup all purpose flour
13g/1 tablespoon shortening
7g/1/2tablespoon butter

10g /3/4 tablespoon  sugar
35g /2 ½ tablespoon of water + 2-3 drops white vinegar

Oil Dough
65g/ ½ cup Cake flour
26g/ 2 tablespoon  shortening

1tablespoon + 1teaspoon canola oil
Few drops of blue coloring.

Savory Filling
1/4cup Split Mung bean/Yellow split peas
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped green onion
1/2teaspoon Salt
1teaspoon oil
1/4teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2teaspoon crushed red chili
1 teaspoon soya sauce ( I haven’t added)
2-3 cups water for cooking the moong beans
Directions
Water dough
  In a medium bowl, mix in flour, sugar, shortening and butter.
 Rub shortening with flour until it looks like breadcrumbs.
 Add in water mix together to form smooth dough. Cover and rest for 30 mins.
 Divide dough into 2 pieces.

Oil Dough
 In another bowl add cake flour, shortening and oil . Rub shortening gradually into the cake flour to form soft dough. Add few drops of gel food coloring while making the dough. Cover to rest for 30 minutes.
Divide dough into 2 pieces.

 Spread the water dough ball into circle and place the oil dough ball inside.  Wrap oil dough into water dough and flatten.

Roll out into a longish flat thin piece. Roll up like a Swiss roll.

Turn 90deg and spread it into flat thin piece and again roll up into a Swiss roll.
Cut each roll into 3 equal pieces with a sharp knife.

With the spiral side( cut side)  facing down, flatten and roll. Wrap with savory moon bean filling.

Savory moong bean filling

Directions
Soak the moong/mung beans for 2 hours, wash until water run clear, and cook with 2-3 cups of water in dutch oven for about 45 minutes or until beans cooked very well and soft. Mash them with masher.
Heat oil and cumin seeds in skillet and add onions and green onion and fry for few minutes, then add mashed beans and stir fry till dry
Season with salt continue frying for 5 minutes with low fire. Add in crushed red chili peppers and combine well.
Once it cools enough to touch make 6 small balls.
Tip :
1. When rolling into a round, roll the edges of the dough thinner to make it easier to seal.
2. If your shortening is hard, soften it in the microwave before using.
When you are ready to bake, preheat oven to 350F and bake the spiral moon cakes for about 35-40 minutes or until they puffs well crust gets crispy.
Enjoy on the same day. Left over’s don’t taste good.
You use the color of your choice.
For the Chinese pastry I adapted from hereand here, for filling I adapted from here.

 I am linking this to International Food challenge #1


 

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Comments

  1. Sangeetha Priya says

    love the spirals and savory filling…

    • Swathi Iyer says

      Thanks sangeetha.

  2. Meena Kumar says

    Blue moon cake looks delicious I saw many members put up their post but I must say savory filling sounds really good to me.

    • Swathi Iyer says

      Meena, I am forced to make everything blue nowadays. Yes savory filling makes my hubby to taste test.

  3. Rekha Vengalil says

    Wow awesome 🙂

    • Swathi Iyer says

      Thanks Rekha

  4. Hamaree Rasoi says

    simply awesome and delicious looking moon cakes. Must have been a hit in your household. Wonderful pics as well.
    Deepa

  5. Mahi says

    Beautiful blue cake!

  6. Sona S says

    Love the savory filling, beautifully done.

  7. Rebecca Subbiah says

    impressive all from scratch

  8. Gayathri Ramanan says

    lovely color..simply superb cake..

  9. Happys Cook says

    Awesome , beautiful color… well tried savoury version..

  10. kitchen queen says

    innovative and droolworthy.

  11. Rafeeda AR says

    this absolutely looks awesome… love the savory filling…

  12. sangeetha pn says

    They looks simply awesome! :)very beautiful spiral moon cake

  13. Bhawya Sankar says

    wow its looks so yummy and colorful… bookmarked it 🙂

  14. Sona - quick picks/pick quicks says

    so bright blue !! lovely…and nice filling too.

    Latest post on my blogs
    pick quicks – DO-yourself-kidsroom-concepts
    quick picks – Super quick apple subji

  15. Priya Anandakumar says

    Wow Swathi, the blue color is really stunning and wonderfully made spiral moon cake…

  16. Supriya Nair says

    Love the colour. The cake looks so innovative 🙂

  17. Vijayalakshmi Dharmaraj says

    lovely color of moon cake… love it…

  18. Kaveri Venkatesh says

    Awesome looking mooncake..Looks so flaky with all the layers.

  19. Shama Nagarajan says

    delicious and inviting

  20. Harini M says

    Lovely cake with healthy filling Swathi

  21. Veena Theagarajan says

    lovely blue color.. refreshing.. Tempting too

  22. Arthy shama says

    Wonderful moon cake Swathi, colour ‘blue’ looks so gentle and rich on a cake 🙂

  23. Eric Pepple says

    Those look awesome! Thanks for sharing 🙂

    Happy Blogging!
    Happy Valley Chow

  24. divya says

    truly divine..love ur clicks

  25. Divya Shivaraman says

    In blue those rolls are simply innovative

  26. Suja Manoj says

    Swathi,it looks beautiful,love the blue color..yummy

  27. mjskit says

    WOW! These are absolutely amazing! and so pretty!

  28. Suja Md says

    Wow love those cute colored cake…Delcious clicks!

  29. Asha Shivakumar says

    Interesting color and a fun dessert. I enjoy the pastry of moon cakes.

  30. Hema says

    This is so awesome, very new to me and I like the bright blue color..

  31. Elisabeth Foodandthrift says

    Such a pretty shade of blue, Swathi…filling with the savory stuffing is a superb idea. Would love to taste this. So festive and delicious! Thank you for your sweet and caring words on my blog!

  32. Shashi Charles says

    Such beauties! I don’t think I have ever had savoury mooncakes before – so so intersting!
    Shashi @ http://runninsrilankan.com

  33. Savitha Ganesan says

    Love the coloufull moon cake.very helpful post.

  34. The 21st Century Housewife© says

    I was interested to learn about Mooncakes, Swathi. Yours are beautiful. I like blue too 🙂 What an interesting and delicious treat!

  35. Amila Wickramarachchi says

    wow!they look colourful and beautiful…

  36. Reeni Pisano says

    These are so pretty! I love that vibrant color and I bet they are tasty too! Something I always wanted to try.

  37. Suja Md says

    Wow!!! moon cake looks pretty good…cute little moons on the plate!! love its color!