How to make a mooncake

1. Prepare stuffing: Traditional ingredients of Cantonese-style mooncake include five kinds of kernel -

pine cone, sesame, walnut meat, melon seed and almond. Alternatively, red beans are a good option.

2. Prepare dough: mix flour with pure peanut oil and sugar, leave it for at least six hours.

3. Cut the prepared dough into small pieces and then wrap the stuffing. The weight proportion between crust and stuffing is 1 part pastry and 4 parts stuffing.

4. Put mooncake in a wooden-mold with a carved pattern inside. Shake the mold slightly several times.

5. Pre-heat oven. After baking the mooncake for five minutes at the temperature of 150 C, take it out to brush it with egg yolk and then bake for another 20 minutes.

6. Generally a mooncake keeps its good favor in two months and some moon cakes keep for a year.

China Daily

(China Daily 09/25/2007 page19)