bear sweet potato mooncakes
14 September 2020 / CakeHealthy cuteness
My mom called me and told me not to try making mooncakes as traditional mooncakes are calorie packed and have very high sugar and fat content. She didn’t want me to be eating all the unhealthiness and spend the rest of the day sedentary! Thus, I experimented with these cute buttery pastries and filled them with sweet potatoes! The usual red bean outer filling is substituted with purple sweet potato paste, made with only mashed sweet potato, corn starch, and brown sugar, and the inner “egg yolk” was made with orange sweet potato paste!
I didn’t have traditional mooncake molds and didn’t want to buy a mold that I would likely use once a year, so I decided to create these cute bears instead! Hope y’all enjoy!
Ingredients
makes 8 bears
Dough
* 3/4 cups flour
* 2 Tbsp water
* 2 Tbsp sugar
* 3 Tbsp soft butter
* 1 Tbsp cocoa powder
Pastry Dough
* 1/2 cups flour
* 3 Tbsp soft butter
* 1 tsp cocoa powder
Filling
* 300g purple sweet potato
* 300g orange sweet potato
* 2 tsp corn starch
* 2 tsp brown sugar
* 2 tsp water
* 1 Tbsp butter
* black food dye for facial features
1. 1. Let’s prepare the filling first. Peel and dice both the orange and purple sweet potato. Then steam them for about 20 minutes until they are soft.
2. 2. In a small cup, mix together 1 tsp each of corn starch, brown sugar, and water. Do this twice for each sweet potato.
3. Transfer the steamed sweet potato into another bowl and mash them, separated by color. Strain to get rid of unwanted fibers. Then mix in the corn starch, brown sugar, and water into the purple and orange sweet potato separately.
4. Heat up a small frying pan with 1/2 tbsp butter. Pour in the orange sweet potato mixture and fry until a paste forms.
5. Repeat with the purple sweet potato mixture.
6. Roll the orange sweet potato paste into small balls, the size of a penny. Freeze this ball for 10 minutes so that it sets.
7. Enclose the orange sweet potato balls with the purple sweet potato paste and roll into a ball, the size of a quarter. Freeze the paste.
8. Now let’s move onto the dough! Preheat the oven to 340F. Then combine 3/4 butter, 2 tbsp sugar, and 3 tbsp of soften butter. Mix and integrate all the ingredients throughly until the texture is similar to sand. I like to use a chopping motion.
9. Add 2 tbsp water and knead until the dough forms. Pinch off a quarter size of the dough for the bear nose.
10. With the remaining ball of dough, incorporate cocoa powder and knead to give the bear a brown color. Set this ball of dough aside.
11. Next, we will make the pastry dough. Combine 1/2 cup flour with 1 tsp cocoa powder. Add in 3 tbsp of soft butter and mix this. It will come into a crumbly ball of dough. Add more butter if the dough doesn’t form.
12. Split each of the two balls of dough into 4 pieces. Take a ball of each and roll each into a long rectangle, about 6 inches long, 3 inches wide.
13. Place the pastry dough on top of the other dough. Roll this stack up starting from the short end. Repeat three more times.
14. Cut each strip of dough in half to get 8 pieces. You should see a nice, swirl cross section.
15. Place the dough so that the cross section head is away from you and the tail of the roll is near you. Flatten the dough and roll the dough into a circle.
16. Place a sweet potato ball inside and enclose the sweet potato ball with the dough. Pinch of excess dough so the bottom doesn’t get too thick.
17. With the pinched off excess, form bear ears. Use water as glue to paste the bears in place.
18. With the white dough saved from step 9, roll flat and cut out the bear nose. I used a boba straw for this step. “Glue” the bear nose onto the bear with water.
19. Draw on the eyes, nose, and mouth of the bear with black food dye.
20. Repeat for all 8 bears. Then bake at 340F for 35 minutes
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