Matcha/ Cocoa Spiral Mooncakes with Red bean/ Sesame Mochi Filling (Recipe)

I was on a mooncake-baking frenzy for the last couple of weeks. This particular kind of mooncake is my mom’s favorite pastry. She favors Chinese pastries over the Western ones and she has been craving these for a couple months now so I decided to get over my fear of baking flaky pastries and jump on the bandwagon. And lo and behold, making these was a hell lot easier than I thought it would be! Not to mention fun!! I thoroughly enjoyed making these.

Note that I added melon seeds to my red bean paste (and sesame paste). That’s totally optional.

I chose to enclose the mochi within the red bean and sesame paste fillings because I thought it would balance the heaviness/oiliness of the pastry and the pastes and it did. The mochi is sticky, but not so that it adheres to the roof of your mouth and teeth. My dad did not enjoy the addition of mochi in the pastry but everyone else who tried thought it elevated the texture and taste of the mooncake. Turns out my dad just does not like mochi or anything sweet made with glutinous rice. So it seems that whether the addition of mochi is a good or bad thing depends on personal preferences hence you can definitely choose to leave it out. I bought the sesame paste and red bean paste from Kwong Cheong Thye and damn, they’re good! They are less oily and less sweet than what I usually purchase, which is always a good thing in my book, as well as my mom’s. I added melon seeds to the pastes and kneaded till they were evenly distributed in the pastes. You don’t have to.

Recipe is adapted from Carol 自在生活

For the text version of the recipe, click here.