I had really hoped that this recipe would turn out well.
It did not.
And yet, our time spent this afternoon was not for naught, as the girls had a great time making a huge mess of my kitchen mooncakes in honor of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival yesterday.
Assemble your ingredients. It doesn’t really matter if you follow the recipe, because you won’t want to eat the end result.
This is sort of like a very expensive and time consuming play doh project.
Add the dry ingredients together and stir.
In a separate bowl, add the sugar to the eggs.
Mix well.
Then mix some more.
Mix so long you actually ask your mom if you can stop mixing.
At last, you can stop mixing.
Add the dry ingredients a little at a time.
Stop and smile for your mom.
Add more dry ingredients, do more mixing. Be sure to follow directions exactly, otherwise the end product might turn out to actually be edible.
Stop and chug iced coffee. Oh wait, that’s for mom.
Turn the dough out onto a floured surface.
Squish it.
Pound it.
Smush it into balls.
Then, because your mom is too lazy to buy mooncake molds, use a muffin tin instead.
And then, because your mom is too grossed out to buy lotus paste and bean curd, use M&Ms and sprinkles instead.
Or strawberry preserves if you’re feeling like a health nut.
Then seal up the little gems and get them into the oven!
Before…
and after!
Don’t they look delicious?
You just wanna squeeze ’em, don’t you?
Or, at the very least, pose with them.
And that’s about all their good for.
Only Shepherd will actually eat them.
Hope you were able to do something fun to celebrate the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival!
You crack me up! I hate mooncakes. They taste awful. Your girls look absolutely adorable making them. 🙂
We used the Yan Can Cook recipe, substituted coconut flour and added apple butter instead of lotus paste. Turned out pretty good. Tatse more like scones….
Our kitchen was destroyed also but hey, we got great pictures!! LOL
My FAVORITE photo is the mixing one, where Isabelle is plugging her ears!! lol!! This cracked me up because a certain little someone in our house has done the very same thing! WONDERFUL photos!
And like I always tell my students…it's the process that counts not the product! 😉
Thanks for the laugh tonight! 🙂
We had a pretty bad moon festival experience ourselves…more about that this week on my site.
I made them too, AWFUL! Mine were as hard as the moon!
What really killed me though, is that I bought the mold and it was VERY time consuming. That was the real kick in the butt for the end result to be as bad as it was! lol!
Like you said though, my little girl loved every second of making them!
Jill
We celebrated and made our version of moon cakes…more like cookies. They are a shortbread cookie with Strawberry preserves in the middle. The girls had fun making them and we all had fun getting eaten alive outside looking at the moon with our mooncakes and hot apple cider. Thats what we get for living in Florida where it NEVER cools off!!! Oh well…fun memories.
Love your pictures…your crew looked like they had a blast making them!!
Blessings to you~
That's so funny! We bought moon cakes in China…but they didn't make it passed customs. That should tell us something about what's lurking inside. We bought more the other day at a local Chinese market…they were expensive and disgusting. Apparently that's the American way of enjoying this Chinese festival.
There are so many things about mooncakes that I absolutely love but eating them isn't on that list. They're so pretty and seem like they should be buttery and melt-in-your-mouth delicious but they taste like wet cardboard.
Your photos sure made them look yummy though!
I've been wanting to get some molds and find a good almond cookie recipe to use with them. Maybe next year, we'll try that.
🙂
Donna
Our Blog: Double Happiness!
You crack me up! Can I confess that The Prez (who will eat just about anything) actually had to spit a bite of mooncake into his napkin while we were in China?
Ooohhh … I may get people all fired up, but for us Southern folks, the lack of sweetness was just not cutting it. I have however seen a few blogs around our parts where the Mid Autumn festival was celebrated with Moon Pies! Now you're talking!
Here is a link: http://www.moonpie.com/hist_text.asp
Yeah, they are made in TN! What can I say? The only thing that would be better than a Moon Pie by itself is a Moon Pie with an RC cola!
We had a GRAND Mid Autumn Festival in Hong Kong … no worries … the delicious looking moon cakes from the local bakery were awful as well. I think it's kinda like fruitcake at Christmas time in the States. A fun tradition … but not edible.
It does look like the girls enjoyed themselves. I have a great tasting, kid friendly recipe for mooncakes that I will be glad to send your way.
Blessings,
Robin
Looks like a fun project but I have tasted the real ones in China and I wasn't a fan………but its a good tradition to do with the kids. The girls look adorable helping and I love that mixing bowl.
that is so awesome and funny!!! 🙂 and your pics are just wonderful! they look like they are having a blast!!
i need to find a mooncake recipe… never had one.
i'm the terrible mom who didn't even know it was moon festival until yesterday. yep. that's right. a day late and a dollar short. *snort*
melissa
O.K. Now I can be the loser mom. I don't even know what the moon festival is! Apparently it involves a disgusting moon cake! My poor little Asian beauty. Her mom has got to get on the ball. Now…. with number TWO Asian beauty baby on the way. We sent off our LOI last week for a beautiful little almost two year old girl. Who.. I am not going to be able to get to fast enough! Love, Kim
Oh, those girls are too cute for words!
oh wow,i love this posting!!!!
SOOOOO cute!!!!
we brought some back from China a month ago, and i tried several diferent ones whilst we were there….mmm…oh well, your look yummyier 🙂
s
Our China activity book had us make Mooncakes with biscuits (cut not drop) and jam. It was a much tastier idea and actually made the point I think. We ordered mooncakes one year and none of us liked them, so I think the bisuits are our new tradition.
i've never seen mooncakes look like puffed biscuits before . . . hmmm. of course, every chinese person i know buys their mooncakes from Shen Kee (I believe they have a website, you can google it). i think lots of asian treats are only wonderful if you grow up with it, sort of like how i think fried pickles are gross, but a whole contingency of ppl love them. adorable pictures.
oh well, your photos are great anyway 🙂
lotus paste and bean curd is delicious =D gotta get the authentic stuff though…
Love this series of shots Stefanie! Even if they didn't eat them….there was a whole lot of memory making….at least it looks like they had fun! :):):)
Those mooncakes look a lot better than the ones we made- we had bean paste, green tea paste, lotus paste, etc- yuck!
I think we will improvise next year!
Heh. I lived this post on Saturday, but I failed to take pictures. Oh, and our mooncakes fell apart for some reason. Which is why I'm glad we had the old standby on hand – moon pies! Hurray for moon pies!
Loved the pictures. Can't wait to make mine with our kiddos next year! I'm the worlds pickiest eater so no eating here(should be great when we travel, have no clue what I'll eat!) Oh well it's the tradition the kids love!
Loved this post…..the girls are getting so "grown up"! They are just beautiful, Stef!
i am laughing SO hard. this is the best post. and wow, the girls hair… holy cow i have missed some PICS or something!!! so long!!
god they are beautiful, those 2. growing UP too fast :O)
How cute! They are so adorable