Snowskin Pumpkin Mooncakes (No-Bake)

To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of mooncakes! I find the dough usually too thick and cloying and I dislike red bean paste. 

I do love mochi however, and these snowskin mooncakes are first of all awesome because they are NO-BAKE, but second of all, I think the taste is much better than that of the baked traditional mooncakes.

This is NOT an easy recipe however, at least for me, not a highly skilled baker. I classify this recipe as advanced.

Another thing to take note of is that the mooncakes need to be eaten the same day and preferably immediately. If you are planning to make these mooncakes, I would recommend getting started in the morning and making a day of it.

The actual making of the mooncakes isn't necessarily that long, but there are several breaks needed to be taken for the chilling of the dough which will eat into your time.

So let's get started!

Making the Pumpkin Paste

In a small pot, on low heat, add your pumpkin puree. Then grab your glutinous rice powder and slowly add it while mixing until it forms a thick paste. Let the mixture cool off a bit, and then add it to the fridge to cool off for a hour. 

After they have chilled, roll the paste into balls about 20 grams in size. Add these to the freezer to chill for 30 minutes or so.

Making the Snowskin Wrapping

While the paste is chilling, we're going to make the snowskin wrapping for the mooncake. So grab a large bowl, one that will fit inside of your steamer and you're going to add all of your dry ingredients: the glutinous rice flour, rice flour, and cornstarch and give it a mix.

Next, place a fine mesh sieve over the bowl and sift your powdered sugar aka confectioners sugar.

In a medium sized bowl, mix together your wet ingredients: the milk, vanilla extract, and vegetable oil. 

Next up you're going to combine the ingredients. Take the dry ingredients and make a hole in the middle of it, with a spoon. Then you are going to gradually add the wet ingredients into the mixture, just a tablespoon or so at a time. Make sure that the ingredients are mixed and combined before you add more wet ingredients.

Eventually you will get a very soupy dough, which is what you're going for!

Prepare your steamer, and place your large bowl inside. You will steam the mixture for about 20 minutes.

To check if the dough is ready, stick a chopstick into the middle. If it comes out clean, the dough is ready to go!

You're going to put that on the cutting board to cool off until it's safe to handle, about 20 minutes or so

After it's been cooled off, scrap the dough out of the bowl with a spoon and you're going to knead it with the spoon and then your hand for about 5 minutes until it forms a ball.

Then transfer the dough to a clean surface and knead it by hand for another 5 minutes.

At this point, you're going to add your food coloring. I chose to add the food coloring to over half of the mooncakes so that I would have both white and orange mooncakes.

I don't have an exact measurement of the amount of food coloring that you should use, but measure out mostly yellow food coloring and just a dab or red food coloring to color it orange. The red food coloring is extremely potent. 

Rub the mixture all over the dough to get the desired coloring and add more food coloring as needed. When you've achieved the desired color, knead the dough for 2 more minutes to make sure that the color is infused throughout. 

Then wrap it up in a piece of plastic and chill it in the fridge for 30 minutes

Assembling the Mooncakes

Grab the chilled mooncake dough from the fridge and shape them into balls of approx 30 grams.

Put them back into the fridge to chill for another 20 minutes since the heat from your hand will have softened the dough too much for the mooncake press. 

Next, place the ball of dough on the cutting board and shape them into circular pieces of dough. Not too thin, or the filling will come bursting out. This video was really helpful in helping make the circular shape.

Next, grab your balls of pumpkin puree and place once of them in the middle of your circular dough.

Fold the edges of the dough together so that the dumpling is sealed.

Grab your mooncake press and gently stuff the round piece of dough inside.

Place the end against the cutting board and press firmly but gently for about 20 seconds and carefully push the lever to release our your gorgeous little pumpkin mooncake!