Spiral mooncakes, swirl mooncakes, thousand-layer mooncakes, Teochew-style mooncakes, or 潮州月餅… these sweet, flaky pastries go by several names. What I like about these mooncakes is that you can make them really pretty and colorful without needing any special equipment like a mooncake press. The fillings you find are the same as your traditional mooncake fillings – adzuki red bean paste, lotus seed paste, jujube date paste, or anything else that you can make into a paste. However, I have noticed that taro seems to be a particularly popular filling you see in bakeries for these swirly pastries, and when they use taro, they color the pastry shell purple. The trick in making all those flaky layers is the use of two different doughs – an oil dough and a water dough – folded with a certain technique to create layers. This technique is also used in Taiwanese-style mooncakes.
Recipe
First, make the paste:
- If using beans, soak overnight.
- Boil or steam until soft
- Mash or blend in food processor until it’s a paste.
- Add sugar, butter, extracts, spices, etc to taste.
- In pan, cook the paste in oil until it becomes thick enough that it doesn’t stick to the pan.
Second, make the water dough:
- In order to create the many layers in the pastry shell, you will need to prepare two types of doughs: water dough and oil dough. To make the water dough, mix 5:2:1 ratio of all-purpose flour: water: oil.
Third, make the oil dough:
- To make the oil dough, mix 4:1 ratio of cake flour: oil. If you want to add food color to your pastry, I suggest adding it to the oil dough. If you want to add sugar, you can add it here too.
Fourth, make the outer pastry shell:
- Take a piece of the water dough, oil dough, and paste, and roll each one into equal size balls.
- Flatten the water dough, and wrap it around the oil dough, and roll it into a ball
- Using a rolling pin, roll the ball into a long oval shape.
- Take the edge from one side of the oval, and roll diagonally to the other side of the oval. You should have a long cylindrical shape.
- Using a rolling pin, roll the cylinder longitudinally until it’s flat and long
- Take one end of strip and roll to the other end of the strip.
- Using a knife with serrated edges, cut the roll in half down the middle so that the cut face looks like a spiral.
- Flatten the spiral, then use it to wrap around the ball of paste.
Fifth, bake:
- Bake for 20 minutes in the oven at 375F. The mooncakes should be flaky.