Thursday, September 07, 2006

Fly Me To The Moon

This month, along with my credit card statement, there were a couple of promotional leaflets from some of the leading hotels & restaurants in Singapore touting their Mid-Autumn offerings of mooncakes and snowkins.

The plebeian baked lotus paste with an orange-crimson salted eggyolk is no longer good enough to satisfy the modern tastebuds of the new generation consumers.

They now comes in a myriad of colors, flavors & fillings, ranging from ice-cream, champagne truffle, yam, greentea, chempadak, XO brandy, rum & raisin, chocolate pearl, cranberry, chocolate, durian and even exquisite birdnest. One of the newer concoction is the Bailey's Irish Cream Snowskin which one hotel has promoted as their 'New' flavor on the leaflet.

Having a bottle of Bailey's at home, I decided to go into my kitchen laboratory to come up with my own version of this snowskin.

First, I need to think of what to use in place of the salted egg yolk. Adapting a soft custard filling used for sweet buns, I added a good cup of Bailey's, a dash of Kahlua and some greenbean powder to make it into a semi-hard pudding-like mixture which I allow to set overnight. Then using a watermelon baller, I scoop the set custard into round balls. Ta-Da, pseudo-eggyolks.

The skin is easier to concoct as all I did was to reduce the sweetness and then added some Baileys and tirimisu cream to an existing snowskin pastry recipe.

I left the filling of white lotus paste in it's original flavor without any modification.

The end result is a very delicate snowskin, with the color of pale skintone (the skin needs further working to make it smoother though!). The fragrance of Bailey's come through when you bite on the pseudo-eggyolk, which is not too sweet and best of all,you do not get that cloying feeling from eating a real eggyolk.

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Verdict? I give myself 3.25 out of a 5-star rating.

8 comments:

Amrita said...

wow these look sooo lovely! do u mind sharing the recipe for the skin and the pseudo yolk please??? :D

Rusti said...

Amrita: For the snowskin, use Yochana's orange poppy seed snowskin but substitute the evaporated milk with Bailey's. Use 300ml of water in place of the water and OJ. Substitute the orange paste with Tirimisu Cream.

The custard eggyolk as I mentioned is experimental. I have received different feedbacks. Some like it as it is. Others prefer it sweeter and yet others suggested to add a dash to salt to mimic the slight saltiness of a real eggyolk. I used:
30g each of custard and hoon kueh powder,
20g butter,
280g milk,
100g Baileys
60g sugar (aprox)
1tbsp Kahlua (optional)
Mix well and cook in a non-stick pan over medium-low fire till the mixture leaves the sides of the pan and then cook a further 5-7 minutes. Quickly pour into a deep dish and leave to set in the fridge. You can use a watermelon baller to scoop out the set custard

Amrita said...

thanks so much

can I just ask..what is tiramisu cream? is it one of the concentrated flavours available in the little bottles?

Also, do you have a recipe for...

1) custard mooncakes (different flavours also)
2) durian snowskin mooncake
3) strawberry yogurt mooncake..like the new one in Marriott??

Thanks so much, sorry if im troubling u ^_^

Rusti said...

That's right. You can buy the Tirimisu Cream in little bottles. So far I have only seen it at Ailin's. Not sure if the other shops carry them.
Sorry, I do not have the recipes for those snowskin. I am also cracking my head how to do the strawberry yoghurt fillings. Maybe a frozen strawberry yoghurt mousse would do the trick. What do you think?

Amrita said...

Wouldnt a frozen strawberry yogurt mousse need freezing? But they keep it in the fridge, not the freezer...im also cracking my head upside down trying to figure out how they make it......

Do you think they make a custard with the yogurt drink instead of milk????

Rusti said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Rusti said...

It was supposed to be frozen but the sample I tried was like softened (almost melted) ice-cream.

Amrita said...

so u think maybe use frozen yogurt???