Cantonese-style baked mooncakes

Your ingredients

Get ready: Scales, bowls, saucepan, food processor, non-stick pan, 50 g mooncake mould, brush and baking tray.

• 🥜Paste: 100 g dried lotus seeds
• 🍯Paste: 75 g sugar
• 🥣Paste: 50 g neutral cooking oil
• 🍯Dough: 150 g golden syrup
• 💧Dough: ½ tsp lye water
• 🥣Dough: 50 g neutral cooking oil
• 🍚Dough: 220 g plain flour
• 🥚20 salted egg yolks
• 🍚Cornstarch
• 🥚1 egg yolk
• 🥜Water, for soaking and simmering lotus seeds
• 🥚1 tsp water, for the egg wash

Let’s make it

1. Make lotus paste

   Soak dried lotus seeds overnight in the fridge. Drain, remove green centres and simmer in fresh water for 30–40 minutes until soft. Drain and blend, adding little water if needed. Cook puree in a non-stick pan with sugar and paste oil, stirring until thick and shape-holding. Cool promptly.

2. Make pastry

   With adult help, mix golden syrup, the measured food-grade lye water and pastry oil. Add flour and combine briefly into soft dough. Cover and rest for 30 minutes.

3. Weigh the filling

   For each cake, weigh one ready-to-use cooked salted yolk plus enough lotus paste to total 30 g. Enclose the yolk in the paste. Wrap that filling with 20 g pastry and seal.

4. Mould the cakes

   Dust very lightly with cornflour, press in a 50 g mooncake mould and release onto a lined tray.

5. Bake in stages

   Bake at 190°C conventional or 170°C fan for 5 minutes. Mix the brushing yolk with 1 tsp water. Lower oven to 160°C conventional or 140°C fan, brush cakes very thinly and bake 5 minutes. Brush thinly once more and bake another 10–15 minutes until cooked and evenly golden.

6. Cool and store safely

   Cool promptly on a rack and refrigerate in a covered container within 1–2 hours. Rest overnight in the fridge before serving; this safer cool storage may leave a firmer texture than room-temperature resting. Use within 48 hours or freeze portions promptly.