3 Easy Mooncake Recipes To Try For Mid-Autumn Festival

To celebrate Mid-Autumn festival, many of us get our mooncakes from hotels, restaurants and even home-based bakers (HBB) who guard their mooncake recipes with care. But there’s a certain joy in attempting to make your own mooncakes from scratch, too! Here, we’ve put together some easy mooncake recipes for beginner bakers, where you be as as generous with the fillings and even cut down sugar if you prefer a healthier treat! 

Easy mooncake recipes you should try

1. No-bake snowskin mooncakes

If you don’t have an oven but still want to make good ol’ mooncakes, snow skin mooncakes are definitely your best option. The best thing about making snowskin mooncakes is that you can literally make them in any colour you want –- all you’ve got to do is change the colour of your food colouring! Try this easy mooncake recipe to create your own colourful mooncakes!

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: –
Servings: 6 mini mooncakes

Recipe ingredients

• 210g lotus seed paste
• 50g fried glutinous rice flour (gao fen)
• 50g icing sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• Food colouring of your choice
• 60-70g cold water
• 40g shortening

How to make mooncake:

1. Split the lotus paste (available on Shopee Supermarket) into six, with each portion measuring about 35g. Roll them into balls and set aside.
2. Mix and sieve fried glutinous rice flour (available on Green Earth Organic Official Store) and icing sugar (available on Shopee Supermarket) together
3. Add vanilla essence (available on 99 Megamart) and food colouring of your choice to cold water. Mix well.
4. Pour the cold water into the flour mixture in batches. Mix until it resembles a soft dough.
5. Mix the shortening (available on RedMan Official Store) into the dough until the dough becomes a soft and smooth homogeneous dough
6. Divide the dough into six portions; each portion should weigh 25-30g. Roll into balls.
7. Flatten the dough balls and put the lotus paste balls in. Wrap the dough around the lotus paste so that it is secure, and roll the entire dough into a ball.
8. Dust with some fried glutinous rice flour and press it through a mould.
9. Remove from mould and refrigerate for at least 1 hour before serving.

2. Mooncake biscuit

Bring back the childhood memories with simple mooncake biscuits — a guaranteed favourite among the kids even today! Mooncake biscuits usually sport cute patterns like piglet, fish or cartoon characters. In addition, they usually don’t contain any filling which makes them one of the best easy mooncake recipes for beginners! It’s so simple, you can even get your little ones to participate in the baking process.

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 20 minutes
Servings: 17 pieces

Recipe ingredients

• 450g Hong Kong flour (sifted)
• 270g sugar syrup
• 9g alkaline water
• 113g peanut oil
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 tbsp fresh milk

How to make mooncake:

1. Combine sugar syrup, alkaline water (available on VitaKids Official Store)
2. Sift the Hong Kong flour (available on RedMan Official Store) in a large bowl and make a well in the middle before pouring in the sugar syrup mixture. With a silicon spatula (available on EZCOOK Official Store), mix everything to form a soft dough. Cover and let it rest for 20 minutes.
3. Prepare your counter by dusting it with Hong Kong flour. Place the dough on the counter and knead it until it’s smooth. Portion the dough into 45g equal pieces and roll into a ball Then, dust some more flour on each ball.
4. Dust some Hong Kong flour on your mooncake mould and press the dough firmly into the mould. Then, remove the dough from the mould and place it on a lined baking tray.
5. Bake in a preheated oven of 160 degree celsius for 10 minutes
6. While waiting, create your egg wash by mixing egg yolk with fresh milk (available on Shopee Supermarket).
7. Let the mooncakes cool down for about 10 minutes after the first bake before giving them an egg wash. Then, bake them again for another 15 minutes.
8. Let them cool before serving

3. Jelly mooncake

Not confident in your baking skills? Fret not, this easy jelly mooncake recipe is unbelievably easy to master. Jelly mooncakes boast the same ‘bounce’ as agar agar except that it comes with a layer of filling — almost like a traditional mooncake! For this recipe, you will be needing a mooncake jelly mould (available on shirowlim) to create the beautiful mooncake indents.

Prep time: 30 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes
Servings: 4 large mooncakes

Recipe ingredients

For the filling:

• 150g sweet potato, steamed and mashed
• 100ml water
• 150ml coconut milk
• 120g sugar
• 5g potato starch
• 2g agar powder

For the jelly layer:

• 5g agar powder
• 130g sugar
• 400ml water
• 100ml coconut milk
• 1-2 drops of flavouring essence of your choice
• 1-2 drops of food colouring of your choice

How to make mooncake: 

For the filling:

1. Mix all the ingredients for the filling in a large pot, and bring it to a boil for 5 minutes, or until all the agar powder (available on Shopee Supermarket) has dissolved
2. Remove and pour it into spherical ice cube moulds (available on 555home) and allow it to set at room temperature. Set aside.

For the jelly layer:

1. In a large pot, mix all the ingredients for the jelly layer together and bring to a boil
2. Cook for another 5 minutes or until all the agar powder has fully dissolved
3. Pour the mixture into the mooncake jelly moulds, up to about 2cm
4. Allow it to cool at room temperature for 2 to 3 minutes
5. Then, place the remaining jelly mixture on top of a stove at the lowest heat to prevent it from cooling down further
6. Once the jelly has partially set in the mooncake mould, put a piece of the filling (it should have slightly set by now) into the middle of the mould
7. Pour the rest of the jelly mixture to cover it up
8. Allow it to set for about 10 minutes at room temperature, before transferring into the fridge for a minimum of 1 hour
9. Unmould and serve

How to make mooncakes: essential baking accessories

Before you start on these easy mooncake recipes, there are a few things you need to prepare to ensure your baking adventure is smooth. This includes baking accessories like mooncake moulds as well as mooncake packaging. They help turn your bakes into professional-looking ones!

• Mooncake moulds

Mooncakes are all about their unique shapes and pretty indentations. These details are hard to create without a mooncake mould. Which is why you need to equip yourself with a Wooden Flower Mooncake Mould (available on BZMOMMY) which comes with four different words and patterns. If placed together, they form auspicious Chinese blessings which will please the elderly! For something that the kids will appreciate, go for these Cartoon Mooncake Moulds (available on JumboPlayGround) instead. From Doraemon to Pooh and Garfield, these mould designs will surely get your little ones pumped up for Mid-Autumn Festival 2024!

More into modern mooncake designs? Perhaps these trendy Mooncake Stamp Moulds (available on sghotmall.sg) will be right up your alley! Thanks to its unique stamping mechanism, these mooncake moulds are able to create more elaborated 3D designs that traditional moulds are unable to. Plus, they are way easier (and faster) to shape the mooncakes, making it a beginner-friendly baking tool to purchase. All you need to do is pop the mooncake dough into the mould, press it out and voila — a perfectly shaped mooncake is ready to be baked! 

• Mooncake packaging

One thing many bakers forget about is the storage needed for their mooncakes. If you’re intending to give your DIY mooncakes out as gifts, you will need a presentable mooncake box like these Mooncake Gift Boxes (available on BaeGiftz Sg)! This mooncake packaging instantly transforms your mooncake into atas-looking bakes that are sure to impress your friends and family! Or why not consider these beautiful mooncake box designs that can double as organisation solutions when you’re done indulging!

Meanwhile, if you prefer to have your DIY mooncakes individually packed for maximum freshness, these Individual Mooncake Trays And Packets (available on Blissfulgift) will work great. They’ll require a heat seal and while this may seem troublesome, it’s going to add a lot more pizzazz to your homemade mooncakes – worth it, if you ask me!

Easy mooncake recipe ideas to try for Mid-Autumn Festival

Whatever your level of culinary expertise, you can definitely impress your friends and family with beautiful homemade mooncakes in an equally beautiful mooncake box! If time isn’t on your side and you’re just looking for a quick and easy way to score tasty mooncakes, check out our article on the best traditional mooncakes, or this article on low sugar mooncakes – a perfect gift for the health-conscious friend. Love durian AND snowskin mooncakes? We’ve sussed out the best durian snowskin mooncakes so that you can enjoy the best of both worlds.