Custard Snowskin Mooncake 'Apples'

These custard mooncakes are masquerading as apples for my younger kid's Teacher's Day party at school :).

They are made mini-sized (only about 30g each) for preschoolers. I chose custard as the filling as it's kiddy too, with pandan flavored skin to compliment the custard.

I used the same snowskin recipe as I did previously but with the pandan flavor enhanced. I adapted the custard filling from here.

Recipe for custard filling (makes 26 mini "apples")
Ingredients:
18g cake flour
18g corn flour
24g custard powder
2 eggs, whisked
40g condensed milk
150g fresh milk (Or coconut milk. Coconut milk will be more fragrant but I chose fresh milk because it's for preschoolers.)
25g caster sugar
35g melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Steps:
1. Sift together cake flour, corn flour and custard powder.

2. In another bowl, mix sugar, vanilla extract, condensed milk and fresh milk together until sugar is dissolved.

3. Pour one-third of whisked egg into flour mixture and mix well. Repeat with the rest of whisked egg in small amounts at a time. Pour in condensed milk mixture and butter and whisk until well combined. Don't over mix. Strain the mixture through  fine sieve into a deep, big plate for steaming.

4. Steam at medium-low heat for about 15 minutes or until cooked. Let it cool.

5. Break up the cooked custard with a fork and knead it into a smooth dough. Divide the custard into balls of 14g each. You may have more than enough custard. You may also prepare the custard the day before. If so, wrap the dough in cling wrap and refrigerate it.

Recipe for pandan snowskin
Ingredients:
37g kou fen (cooked glutinous rice flour) plus extra for dusting
37g icing sugar
148g snowskin premix (replace with half icing sugar and half kou fen if you don't have the premix)
37g vegetable shortening
185g pandan water (boil some water with a few pandan leaves cut into 2cm strips for a few minutes.)
1/4 tsp green pandan paste
Green, yellow and brown liquid food coloring

Steps:
1. Sift together kou fen, icing sugar and snow skin premix into a large bowl.

2. Place pandan water, pandan paste and shortening into a small saucepan and heat until shortening melts and liquid is clear. Keep stirring.

3. Pour the liquid into the flour mixture and stir with a spatula until a dough forms. Leave to cool until cool enough to handle with bare hands and the dough won't be so oily by then. Knead until smooth. Add a bit of green and yellow coloring until desired shade of green apple is reached.

4. Portion out 26 balls of 15g each. Pinch out about 8-10g of the remaining dough and color it brown. Color the rest of the remaining dough a darker shade of green. You may dust with a bit of kou fen if the dough gets too sticky to work with.

5. Wrap each ball of custard with a ball of dough and pinch seal it. Roll it into a ball and place the mooncake pinched side down.

6. Use a cling wrap and chopstick to make an indent at the top of the apple as shown in the picture below.

7. Roll the dark green dough flat between two sheets of baking paper. Dust the top with a bit of kou fen. Use a leaf cutter to cut out leaves. If you find that the leaf sticks to the cutter, dust the cutter lightly with kou fen as well. You may shape the leaves with your fingers if you don't have a leaf cutter.

8. Stick the leaf onto the apple. Pinch a bit of brown dough and attach the stem onto the apple with the help of a toothpick to press it onto the surface.

9. Refrigerate overnight to firm up the apples. Keep in air tight container that is not too large for the mooncakes.

All packed and ready to party!

You may wonder...isn't Teacher's Day about teachers? This is such a kid-oriented "bake". Stay tuned for my next post with a bake for the teachers who work hard to teach our little ones.


 I'm joining Best Recipes for Everyone August 2014 Event Theme: Dim Sum hosted by Fion XuanHom's Mom.

Update: I may try a different custard recipe in the future. Much as the taste of this one that I used is good, I found it a bit dry. I may try this in the future. Check out this recipe for steamed soft cakes to use up any leftover kou fen.

With love,
Phay Shing