Mid-Autumn Festival - Moon Cake ( part 2) Sugar Water

Before writing, I would like to thank Thuy Thien, Ms. Tran Viet Ha, Ms. Phan Vo's Kitchen ... and many other people who have enthusiastically shared the formula. , as well as answer questions about moon cake on the Internet. Thanks to the sharing of these people as we have many references and also draw many lessons to avoid failure when doing :-)

Although this year I made moon cake for the first time, but the number of tests is quite good, probably enough to conclude that: "Making moon cake is not difficult!", But there are many standard steps. The ingredients are different, so the formula is quite long. The recipe may be longer than other moon cake recipes. Because I hope you have never made bread, when reading recipe, can also be easy to follow.

So I try to write everything I know, focus on explaining techniques and taking notes to avoid mistakes that I drew myself from the experience and documents that I read again. If there are problems in the process, we will continue discussing, but I hope people will read the article thoroughly before asking questions.

PART 1 - PREPARING SUGAR WATER FOR BAKED CAKE (MOON CAKE)

Sugar is one of the most important ingredients in the cake, deciding the sweetness, softness, color and shelf life of the cake. Sugar is usually cooked very early. For a while, the water becomes darker, thicker, richer, and gives the cake a soft, golden brown color.

There are some ideas that sugar should be cooked first from months to a year. But if you do not have time to prepare in advance, you can still use sugar water to cook after 10 to 14 days.

I know quite a lot of friends use sugar water to cook the cake perfectly. I also made bread with sugar just cooked in 2 weeks, but the cake is still very soft, color is also beautiful. So you do not have time to cook sugar, then feel free, cooking now completely in time for Mid-Autumn this year :-)

Boiling sugar also does not take time, so perhaps cooking is best. Although there is plenty of sugar available in Vietnam. But I happen to read the question of a friend, that "do not know in the row for what to buy sugar that is found to be more soft than bread." May be just a feeling, but it is also possible to guess "for what" is true. What is this "specific" and healthy? No one knows for sure, so I think if you can do it yourself, control the input materials, perhaps still Peace of mind and more secure.

Moreover, as we are in Tarragona, so we could not buy sugar water as another motivation for me to make the sugar water.

Cooking ingredients include sugar, water and less lemon or pineapple. Also can add malt and ash waters. After experimenting with a variety of sugary foods with different recipes and different ingredients, and then used to make bread, I draw some experience on the use of raw materials:

1. Sugar: can be used white sugar, yellow sugar or brown sugar. Do not use jelly sugar as the smell of sugar can be very dense. If you do not have a lot of time, use yellow sugar or brown sugar because the color of the sugar will be darker, the cake is brownish. Should choose refined sugar, clean, when cooking will limit the foam and dirt, sugar will be in and better.

2. Lemon or pineapple: Water from lemon or pineapple will help to overcome the phenomenon of sugar (sugar is not turned into tiny drops in sugar water after cooking). In addition, these two fruits also help the sugar water to add the cool aroma from the fruit, so the cake also has less cool scent cool, very pleasant. Lemon yellow or blue does not make sugar water bitter, but using lemon yellow is better. I have not tried pineapple but have read some formulas using this fruit and complimented the delicious sugar so I recorded it for you to do it.

3. Malnutrition: Malt is a malt whitish or light yellow, slightly liquid, medium sweet, not candy, dark brown. back road). Malnutrition helps soften sugar and is comparable but not required. I do not use malt because I cannot buy the right kind.

4. Lye water: There are two types of natural ash water (made from straw ash) and industrial ash water. The ash waters are natural, but the ash waters of industrial vessels, if consumed in large quantities, are harmful to their health Asparagus juice helps soften sugar (which helps to soften the cake), and helps the brown cake look better. However, because of the effects of ash water (on this side only industrial ash water, and can only be bought at Chinese stores), I try to drink water with ash and no ash and cake. . The result is that the cake does not make much difference. After 1 day, the cake does not use water ash is still pretty brown color and also very soft.

I also asked the experience of some friends know that they also do not use ash when making cake. So if you are not sure then you can leave the ash without worrying whether the cake will be hard or less beautiful.

Here are the general remarks, now the formula and specific steps to cook homeostatic

Material

• 1kg sugar (white, yellow or brown, see note (1) above) (use 1/2 white sugar + 1/2 brown sugar)

• 600ml of water

• 1 lemon yellow weighs about 60 - 70 g

• 30ml of malt (optional)

• 5ml (1tsp) ash water + 20ml water (optional)

   Note: This recipe is about 1.1 - 1.2kg of sugar water. On average, each of its casing recipes uses 150 grams of sugar and knead about 450 grams of cake. Normally, the moon cake cover will be about 1/3 of the cake weight (shell = 1/2 times is quite thin, if you like to eat more shell, you can increase the shell reduction). From this ratio, you can calculate the amount of moon cake according to the type of mold you use.

For example, if you use a mold to make a 75-gram cake, the crust will weigh: 75/3 = 25 grams (50 grams). Thus, a cake recipe with 150 grams of sugar water will produce about: 450/25 = 18 cookies => 1kg of sugar cane juice: 18 x (1000/150) = 120 cakes of 75 grams.

Making

1. Lime wash, squeeze water, and remove seeds (to water not bitter), retain the shell.

2. Boil water. Put the sugar in the pot. Pour boiling water, stirring the sugar to dissolve.

Here you can see, I have used brown sugar

* If you have a curved pot or bottom use this type of pot to boil water will be better because the sugar is more radiant.

Pour boiling water into a sugar pot

3. North pot on the stove. Bring to the boiling water to bring down the fire to boiling water, clear foam.

Boiling water will be quite a lot of foam, so use a spoon gently

4. Add the lemon juice and lemon peel to the pot. Bring a small flame for 50 - 65 minutes (depending on the size of the kitchen).

For lemon peel (should put the lime part down, to the surface turn upside - opposite to the picture)

* During the entire cooking process, from the pan to the kitchen, do not disturb the sugar, to avoid the road. When the lemon juice does not need to stir because the pot is boiling water, lemon juice will dissolve itself.

* If using malt and water ash can give these things after about 30-40 minutes from the time of lemon (about 10 - 15 minutes before off the stove). The ash juice needs to be diluted in water before adding to the pot.

* During the cooking process, a clean and damp cloth can be used to clean the sugar particles on the side of the pot. Be careful not to let the sugar fall back to the pot (or can be ignored)

* If the pot is filled with bubbles, use a spoon to gently remove the foam

5. I probably think that the most important thing of sugar water is probably to cook just enough. Too thin sugar will make dough, baking cakes easy to sizzle, nor to be long. Sugar is too thick to make the powder dry, cracked or hard.

However, it is my opinion, otherwise I think it should depend on the heat of the kitchen, the cooking time of sugar can vary. After about 40 to 45 minutes from the boiling point, you can begin to check whether sugar cane has been reached in the following ways:

Option 1: Take some sugar. Use a flat base plate. Place the spatula close to the side of the plate to place a few drops of sugar into the dish. If the sugar immediately spread out is not enough sugar, if sugar water condensed and hard is cooked too much. Sugar is reached when the droplet spreads slightly in the first 1 second, but remains round.

Option 2: Prepare a bowl of water, a few drops of sugar water into the bowl. If sugar water immediately melts and merges into water is not achieved. If the juice is round, it is cooked too much. Sugar beetle will fall down and spread to the bottom of the bowl into a round halo.

Option 3: Before cooking, weigh the weight of the pot. After cooking finished, the pot of sugar and then subtract the weight of the pot. If one kilogram of sugar and 600 milliliters of water were initially cooked, about 1.2 kilograms of sugar water was obtained.

Here I should warn your guys that If sugar water is not reached, dilute it to cook more. If the sugar is too thick (may be due to high heat, water evaporates quickly), add water to the pot and cook until reaching.

6. When the juice has reached, take out the stove. Remove the lemon, leave to cool. Prepare vial for sugar (boiling water should be boiled and dried to sterilize). Use a spoon or large ladle of sugar from the pot to the bottle. Do not pour because the sugar particles in the pot will drift along the water and cause the phenomenon of sugar.

Let the cold water close the lid. After about 7-10 days, it can be used. For as long as the sugar water, bread will be better.

Water sugar on the right of the photo after 7 days.

 During my practicing of making sugar water, I have found some common failures & fixes:

- If sugar water is hardened after cooling: This is a phenomenon of sugar is too much cooking. You can soak in lukewarm water, then add some hot water and add to the pot to make the sugar thinner.

- If there are some tiny sugar crystals in the bottle: add sugar water, add some water and a little lemon juice, then cook.

- If after a while, a layer of white sugar appears at the bottom of the bottle: this is the phenomenon of the road. Some people say that sugar cannot be used anymore. But I think can still be overcome by soaking in hot water for tan sugar and then to re-add more water and lemon juice. I have not encountered the phenomenon again, but if you do and try to fix it, remember to reply home.

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