It is another October morning, the morning after Thanksgiving and my mooncake bake. I knew that I should have waited for a day when I have absolutely nothing going on. Those days are hard to come by so I went ahead with my mooncake adventure. I did planned ahead. I mixed the day before and put it in a ziplock bag in the fridge. My bean paste was already made. Like all my first attempts at everything, it was almost a disaster and a messy oily one at that. I was tempted to just toss the dough.

Being Chinese and thrifty, it’s difficult for me to waste anything. I foraged ahead. I googled how I can rescue my dough from cracking and crumbling. I was rewarded with a few hints. I divided my dough into 12 equal parts and rolled them into little balls. My math was faulty and I ended up with 13, an unlucky number. By hook or by crook I got those dang things made. I decided to skip the salted egg yolks. It was a trick using the mold. The first 3 reminded me of the crooked man poem.

There was a crooked man, and he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence against a crooked stile;
He bought a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house.

I am not crushed. I carried on and finished all the steps, baking and giving them an egg wash and baking again. They did not come out looking beautiful or golden. The design disappeared. Maybe too much egg wash. They have to rest in airtight for 2 days for the crust to soften. I did do a taste test. It was okay. Well really how can crust and bean paste taste bad? More tries needed. There’s much that could go wrong. The oil, the syrup, the temperature of the oven can make a difference in whether it is beautiful, golden or not. Onward I will go more mooncake bake and the Ultimate Blog Challenge.