This recipe is from my father’s old Taiwanese snacks cookbook. It is forgiving enough that a bunch of precocious college students can pull it off their first time.

Ingredients

I’ve divided the ingredients into two parts: the filling, and the dough.

Filling

• 20 “salty egg yolks” (I hate salty eggs and leave them out, but this book has a recipe for this if you really want them)
• 4 cups red bean paste (I buy canned because I’m lazy, but this book has a recipe for this, too.)

If you can find or make them, lotus seed or fig paste are also pretty tasty, the important part is making sure you have the right amount.

Dough for the wrapper skins

It’s helpful to mix the dough together in three parts

Part 1:

• 4 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• ½ cup milk powder

Part 2:

• 3 eggs
• 1¼ sugar

Part 3:

• ¾ cup melted butter
• ½ teaspoon salt

Also…

1 egg yolk for the egg wash.

Method

Filling:

Bake salty egg yolks at 350℉ for 15 minutes, remove and cool. Separate red bean paste into 20 portions. Roll each portion into a ball and use your thumb to make a shallow indentation in the center of each piece to wrap an egg yolk in the center, roll back into a ball. (I avoid the salty egg yolk altogether, if you don’t like them, you have my permission to do so, too.)

Skin:

1. Sift [part 1] together, do this 3 times.
2. Lightly beat [part 2] together until the sugar dissolves, add [part 3], and mix well. Fold in [part 1] and mix into a soft dough. Divide into 20 pieces.

Puttin’ it together:

1. Lightly press each piece into a 4-inch circle, place filling in the center of the dough and gather the edges of the dough to enclose the filling.
2. If you—like I—do not have a mold, that is totes okay. Gently flatten the cake until it’s about the right shape. Its beauty will not be in the shape of a mold, and that is totally okay. Its beauty comes from the love and care you took to make a moon cake. And that is the most beautiful and honorable shape possible for a moon cake. If you are like me and my friends in college, you can take some red food dye and write characters on the top. Or draw pictures.
3. Place each moon cake on an ungreased cookie sheet, brush the top with a beaten egg yolk. Preheat oven to 400℉ and bake for about 30 minutes until golden brown.

Note: In college—in Wisconsin—my friend wanted to send ice cream moon cakes to a friend in Hong Kong. So he bought freeze dried ice cream and we made freeze dried ice cream mooncakes instead of red bean paste mooncake. They are now married. What I’m saying is this recipe is really damn forgiving. The beauty in mooncakes, like beauty in all the things we make for our friends and family, is in the love of the making.

Happy harvest, y’all.