I’ve Realized That Mooncake Molds Are Not Just for Mooncakes
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When I was growing up, mooncakes were something webought at the bakeryfor the Mid-Autumn Festival. But then I started making my own, even before I got into a professional food career. My first molds were wooden ones — like paddles with engravings on them. I picked a couple up at an Asian kitchenware store on Clement Street in San Francisco called Kamei. When I got home, I did some research and played around with them. I realized the plunger-style ones made out of plastic are much easier to use. The wooden ones are more traditional, and I still pull them out when I feel like being romantic with my mooncake production. You press the dough in with your hand to create pressure, which makes the impression — but then you have to be aggressive to get it out.
With the plunger, you literally just push the mooncake out — and if your dough is well oiled, it comes out cleanly. There are different styles of mooncakes but these molds are mainly for Cantonese-style ones, which often include an exterior crust that’s made from flour, oil, and an inverted syrup that doesn’t crystallize, like maple syrup or honey. I use golden syrup. And then you have the filling ,which can be so many different things: black bean paste, red bean paste, nuts, dates, even meat, if you want it to be savory.
The most standard shape you’ll find is round, and they come with different inserts with different designs — like the shape of a full moon, which is what the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrates. Sometimes they’re rectangular. Having the various designs is a fun way of visually differentiating flavors. I have wooden ones that are a strawberry and a persimmon and then a plunger-style one that’s a rabbit. When you go to a more traditional bakery, a lot of times the impression that’s carved into the mold that they’re using has Chinese characters that actually say “double egg yolk” or “black sesame paste.” But at home, I like just knowing, say, that the sunflower design has nuts.
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I originally bought the rabbit one for my mom. Her favorite mooncakes growing up were unfilled ones with just the crust, which is essentially a cookie. That’s what gave me the idea to use these to make regular cookies. If I’m using mooncake-crust dough, I like them a little under an inch — on the thicker side — ’cause they’re so nice and chewy.
Over the holidays, I actually used the molds to make a glazed Chinese five-spice shortbread, also unfilled and then glazed, so the mold acted like a cookie cutter and stamp in one. The dough was almost like a half-shortbread, half-gingerbread cookie, both of which are relatively stiff, so they held their shape and the impressions and didn’t spread too much in the oven. I’ve made mooncake ice-cream sandwiches before too. For those, instead of filling the mold and pushing each cookie out individually, I just pressed the dough into a cookie sheet and then stamped them only with the insert part, which worked really well.AndI’ve used them to make mochi; instead of the traditional dough, you use mochi and wrap that around a very hard, frozen chunk of ice cream. You have to dust those with cornstarch because otherwise it’ll stick. But it holds the impressions really well.
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