Learning To Make Mooncakes To Make Money

Mooncakes is big business and folks making them are raking in the money. Popular hotels and restaurants like Tai Thong have their own line of mooncakes and so do every major bakery. I’m not a mooncake connoisseur, but I dare say that if you were to blindfold a hundred people and serve them home-baked mooncakes and “branded” mooncakes, they wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. There are lots of mooncake varieties in the market today and every year, new flavors and styles appear.

A little late, but my wife, the ever ingenious chef, has been bitten by the mooncake bug. We’ve always been on the lookout for ways to make extra cash. More importantly, we’re looking for a money making idea that we can turn into a part-time business. And since we’re in the Mid Autumn Festival a friend of hers invited her to a mooncake making lesson. I’d say it was money well spent (only RM10) because she came back full of ideas and itchy fingers. Went straight to the kitchen and tried her hand at making mooncakes.

3 hours and free smells later, she came out with a batch of mooncakes. If I had to give her first batch a rating, it would be a 6 . Not bad when you consider she’s never made a mooncake before and we don’t have a proper baking oven. In any case this was a learning experiment. Surprisingly, making mooncakes is not a tedious as it was a decade ago, thanks to ready made fillings (that come in all sorts of flavors) and modern appliances.

Okay… so the first batch was a success and gave us lots of ideas, but even more exciting was that Sam and Sara had loads of fun making little piggys with the pastry. Please excuse the distinct lack of photographic skills.

Top left : Sara’s cookie version of a caterpillar.
Top middle : Squirt… the baby turtle from the movie “Nemo”
Bottom left : My poor Sam started out all excited trying to make Optimus Prime, got frustrated and ended up with a cookie rendition of his father.
Bottom middle : He finally decided Mickey Mouse required only 3 blobs of pastry…
Right : Mum’s 3 mini mooncakes.

Our little fish piggy’s turned out quite nice though and they tasted just as good as the ones from the stores, so you know what that means… I get to eat double for half the price!

We’re giving away our mini mooncakes to our catering customers (read that as : we’re using them as guinea pigs). If non of them expire - our customers, not the mooncakes - then next year, we’ll see if we can take small orders. And if that works out well, then we’ll take it from these and see if we can turn it into a yearly money making venture. No need to compete with the mooncake big boys, but if we can get our own slice of the mooncake business why not?

And what would a post about mooncakes be without some recipes?

Cocoa Ping Pei Mooncake
Coconut Mooncake (Yeh yoong mooncake)
Dragon Fruit Jelly Mooncake
Durian Jelly Mooncake
Green Tea Luo Han Guo Jelly Mooncake
Jade Mooncake (Fei Chui Yuet Paeng)
Lotus Paste
Lotus Paste Jelly Mooncake
Lotus Paste Mooncake
Making of Mooncakes
Mini Shanghai Mooncake
Mixed Nuts Mooncake (Ng ngan mooncake)
Mooncake skin
Pastry for Lotus Paste Mooncake
Ping Pei Cheese Mooncake with Lotus Filling

Happy Mid Autumn Festival everyone… and happy playing lanterns.

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