'Baked Mooncake' Macarons with Mung Bean Paste and Salted Egg Yolk

I challenged myself to create mooncake lookalikes last year for both snowskin and baked mooncakes. It took me a few tries to get the looks right as it was tedious and tricky to get all the right "imprints" and mooncake shapes in macaron form. You may read all about it in this post. This year I thought of making macarons that not only look like the real deal, but also taste like it! Presenting my mooncake wannabes!

I didn't plan to make the snowskin version this year as I thought the baked version appears more like the real thing.

I made the mooncake shells concurrently with my Pusheen and Rilakkuma Teachers' Day bake so it's the same batter as Rilakkuma. It was a small batch of 12 mooncake macarons. I also used a bigger piping tip for the mooncake imprints this time round compared to last year as the smaller tip gets stuck now and then with batter. I had a long day of piping many Pusheens and Rilakkumas so I didn't want to go through the trouble of having to unblock the piping tip now and then! Resulting imprints from using a larger piping tip look less refined than last year's but I am not too perfectionistic about that. You may use any of your favourite macaron recipe to make the shells, or any one of my macaron recipes on the blog. What I really want to share in this post is the recipe for the filling as it is unique.

Here's a picture of the piped shells before baking.

Here is a shot of the shells after baking and after the "egg wash" effect was added. I didn't actually brush the shells with egg wash but just painted it such that it has an effect that looks like egg wash.

Checkout the feet!

I made two types of fillings to mimic the traditional mooncake filling: mung bean paste based and salted egg yolk based.

The mung bean filling recipe is adapted from my first attempt at using homemade mung bean paste as macaron filling last year. You may read about it in this post. I didn't need the filling to be really stiff over here since I am not making a macaron structure so the filling over here is quite different from my first attempt. The whole process of making mung bean paste, which is one of the common mooncake fillings, is rather time consuming and tedious. But you have the added advantage of having absolute control over how much sugar goes into the filling. This is quite an important criteria for me when it comes to macaron fillings as macaron shells already have a high sugar content. Do make the mung bean puree ahead of time and you may even freeze it for a long time. When you want to make the macaron filling, you may work with defrosted mung bean puree and you will find it less of a hassle this way. Which was precisely what I did!

I adapted the mung bean paste recipe from Christine's.

Recipe for mung bean cream 
Ingredients:
Mung bean puree
200g dried deshelled mung beans
A few pandan leaves, knotted or cut into shorter strips
Water

Mung bean paste
150 mung bean puree
28g brown sugar (more if you prefer sweeter)
24g milk (or coconut milk)
1 pandan leaf cut into smaller pieces
1/2 tsp salt
21g unsalted butter
1 tsp vanilla extract
1.5 tsp wheat starch

Mung bean cream
140g mung bean paste
40g heavy cream/ whipping cream

Note: this recipe is catered for macaron filling so it tends to be less sweet but saltier, to be paired with macaron shells that already have high sugar content. Please adjust sugar and salt content accordingly if used in other pastries.

Steps:
1. Prepare mung bean puree. Wash and drain dried mung beans a few times before soaking overnight. Drain the soaking water and rinse and drain one more time. Transfer beans into a shallow steaming plate. Add pandan leaves and cover the beans with enough water till about 1cm above the beans. Steam for 30-35 min or until beans are soft. Drain away excess water and remove pandan leaves. Press the beans through a fine sieve. You may freeze any excess puree for future use. The 200g of dreid beans suggested here is more than you need so there will be excess.

2. Prepare mung bean paste. Heat milk with Pandan leaf in microwave oven or in small saucepan. Let the leaf steep for 10 min. Discard the leaf. Place all ingredients except wheat starch in a nonstick frying pan or wok. Bring to a boil while stirring with a spatula. Once it's boiling, reduce heat to simmer. Keep stirring until liquid is reduced by two-thirds. Gradually add sifted wheat starch and stir until well combined. Continue cooking the mixture and stirring/kneading with spatula until a soft dough forms and all liquid has been cooked off, about 20-30 minutes. Transfer to a bowl and cool completely.

Freshly made brown sugar mung bean paste

3. Make mung bean cream. Gradually add cold heavy cream to mung bean paste and use a spatula to mix well. You may use an electric mixer to incorporate the ingredients together or have a workout using the spatula all the way!

Mung bean cream

Transfer into piping bag and pipe this filling in a ring on the bottom shell.

Recipe for salted egg yolk filling 
Ingredients:
32g sieved cooked salted egg yolk* (about 2 egg yolks)
32g unsalted butter, softened

Steps:
1.* Prepare salted egg yolks by cooking the yolks. You may do so in a few ways. Steaming the yolks only or steaming/boiling the whole egg with shell on, and then extracting the cooked yolk. Press the cooked yolk through a fine sieve and measure out the amount required. Cooking just the yolk takes about 9 minutes of steaming. Cooking whole eggs with shell on takes about 15 minutes.

2. Combine the salted egg yolks in part 1 with butter. You may use a spatula or small hand whisk to combine the two together.

Salted egg yolk filling.

Transfer into piping bag and pipe a dollop of this filling in the middle of the bottom shell.

Refrigerate the assembled macarons for at least 24h before consuming. Before consuming, let the macarons rest at room temperature for about 10 minutes.

Here's a closer look at the cross-section...

No hollows! And yums!

I got hubby to help me to do a taste test and he said it tastes like mooncake! My friend who requested for this set of mooncake macarons tried it said it's yummy and not too sweet!

With love,
Phay Shing