We wholeheartedly thank all our members who have joined this mission of learning the new recipes from all around the globe. International food challenge is a group, started by two blogger friends Saras ( Me) and shobana to learn the technique and different foods around the world. We surfed through several data on the world wide web and found Top 15 cuisine of the world.
1. Chinese Cuisine
2. French Cuisine
3. Italian Cuisine
4. Indian Cuisine
5. Japanese Cuisine
6. Austrian cuisine
7. Spanish Cuisine
8. Iranian Cuisine
9. German Cuisine
10. American Cuisine
11. Thai Cuisine
12. African Cuisine
13. Russian Cuisine
14. Oceanic Cuisine
15. Arab and others (which doesn't have a prominent cuisine to mention).
Which is further divided it into regional.. With reference to the above mentioned data, this month we are going to explore Cantonese recipes from Chinese cuisine...
Information about Cantonese Cuisine:
Cantonese Cuisine, also named Yue Cuisine or Guangdong cuisine, is one of the main cuisine styles in China. It comes from Guangdong Province in southern China and it is one of among the eight great traditions of Chinese cuisine.
The basic cooking techniques of Cantonese cuisine include roasting, stir-frying, sautéing, deep-frying, braising, stewing and steaming. Steaming and stir-frying are most commonly used to preserve the ingredients' natural flavors. The most characteristic cooking methods of Cantonese Cuisine are cooking in salt, cooking in wine, baking in a pan.
For this month, we both selected four recipes..
1 ) Cantonese Wonton Noodles Soup with Chinese Scallion Pancake
2 ) Cantonese Stir-fry or Cantonese Savory Glutinous Rice Dumplings / Zongzi
3) Spiral Moon Cake
The theme is to try either one or all the recipes of their wish and revealing the same on their respective blog on the end of every month( 30 or 31 st). This will be carried on every month with different cuisine and host...
Lets get into one of the recipe of the challenge..
Spiral Moon Cake
Prep time: 15 minutes + 30 minutes for rolling the pastry
Resting time: 20 minutes
Cooking time: 20 minutes for sweet potato
Baking time: 30 minutes
Yield: 10 moon cakes
Adapated from Houseofannie
For the Moon Cake Filling:
Ingredients:
300g sweet potatoes (purple ones preferable)—start with about 400-500g sweet potatoes unpeeled.
¼ cup milk powder
1 tbsp ghee or butter
¼-1/2 cup sugar (depending on how sweet your sweet potatoes are, just taste and add more sugar to taste)
½ tsp salt
Method:
1. Boil sweet potatoes then peel and mash the sweet potatoes.
2. Add the rest of the ingredients to the mashed potatoes and mix till it forms a paste. Cook it on stove top till it thickens. ( or microwave for 10 minutes, Stir in between).
3. Roll out into 20 balls. Put aside while making the pastry dough.
For the Moon Cake Dough:
Ingredients:
Water Dough (A)
200g unbleached all-purpose flour
28g icing sugar
pinch of salt
80g cold butter
80g water
Oil Dough (B)
180g unbleached all-purpose flour
pinch of salt
90g oil (I use canola)
½ tsp pandan essence
Method:
For the water dough
1. Sift flour, sugar and salt.
2.Then cut butter into flour mixture using fingertips or pastry blender until mixture resembles breadcrumbs.
3. Add in water and mix to form a soft, non-sticky dough. If it is sticky, you will need to add a bit more flour to get it to be the right texture. You should be able to form a soft pliable ball that won’t stick to your hands. You don’t have to knead it. Cover and set aside to rest for 20 mins
For the oil dough
4. Sift flour and salt.
5. Then, make a well in the centre of the flour and add in oil and pandan essence. ( I forgot to add color at this stage, So added later to the dough).
6. Draw in the flour from the sides and mix to form a soft even coloured dough, , if it’s too sticky, add more dough till you form a soft ball that doesn’t stick to your hands . Do not over-mix. Cover and set aside for 20 mins
Rolling the cake:
6 Preheat oven to 185 C or 350 F.
7. Divide both the dough(Wet dough as ‘A’ & Oil dough as ‘B’) into 10 equal balls.
8. Taking one piece of (A), flatten and wrap (B) in it. Pinch to seal edges.
9. With the sealed side facing up, roll into a rectangle.
10. Roll up like a snail to form a ‘cylinder’, turn the cylinder 90 degrees, with the end facing up.
8. Roll again into a long thin strip.
9. Using a sharp knife or a pastry cutter, cut the cylinder in the middle into two pieces.
10. With the cut side facing down, flatten the dough, making the edges slightly thinner than the centre.
11. Wrap the filling and pinch to seal with out pulling too hard, otherwise the layers will tear. And when you pinch, you will find that the bottom looks ugly—don’t worry about it.
12. Place sealed side down on lined baking tray and bake for about 30 mins until the top and bottom are a light golden brown.
Suggestions:
- Make the Filling Sweeter Than You Might Think
- Because the outside is rather flaky and hardly sweet at all, it helps to make the filling quite sweet so that the overall pastry is balanced
- The dough will dry out over time and be less easy to work with. So work fast.
Do check this here to roll spiral moon cake..
Please link your recipes to the below linky tool..
G'day! Your moon cakes look delightful, true!
Thank you and Shobana for hosting this great challenge!
Look forward to my blog post soon...
Cheers! Joanne
This was a delicious treat your's look super prefect dear 🙂 loved this first challenge a lot 🙂 kudos to you and shobana 🙂
Thanks for the recipe....perfect and yummy cakes....
Nice challenge. the cakes look so good
Great work Saras. Lovely looking moon cake.
Cake looks delicious.
looks so tempting.. Love it
Stunning and super tempting cake, looks simply beautiful and gorgeous.Seriously we loved this challenge.