making mooncakes with alternate filling
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Anonymous
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I have American tastes but want to try out my new mooncake mold. I would like to make some sort of cherry or blueberry filling, but don't know if that is possible. I need to find a way to get the liquid out of the cherries to make them more of a paste.
I took canned pie filling then added a recipe of crumble to it. That doesn't quite make a paste. I don't want to lose all the cherry flavor. Does anyone have any suggestions of how I can get a tasty cherry filling. I'm thinking maybe dried cherries or blueberries in a crumble. Any advice would be appreciated. |
Anonymous
| Interesting idea! Maybe start with almond paste and mix as much cherry filling into it as you can? It will be very almond-y, but I love that combo of flavors. |
Anonymous
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Why not just make a cherry pie?
From my experiences making mooncakes, the filling has to be very thick so that the cake doesn't fall apart or go flat when you smack it out of the mold. That's why traditionally, only things like nut pastes, bean pastes, eggs, etc are used as filling. I suppose you could mix cherry mash (with the liquid drained off) with marzipan or something, but I really think you are going to end up with a weird tasting and probably falling-apart mooncake. |
Anonymous
| Thank you, cherry and almond sounds pretty good together. |
Anonymous
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I think try to make a paste from fresh blueberries following the same method (more or less) that you would make bean paste: http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/sweetened-red-bean-paste-104211
You could reconstitute dried cherries in liquid or try this kind: http://www.oregonfruit.com/specialty-fruit-products/category/cherries/red-tart-cherries |
Anonymous
Times, they are a changing: http://www.bostonhomestayblog.com/go-global-blog/chinese-mooncakes-and-the-mid-autumn-festival |
Anonymous
| Op, where did you find the moon cake mold? I have been looking for one. |
Anonymous
I got mine from a seller on ebay, but they are also available on Amazon. I got the 2 -2.5 inch plastic mold, including shipping about $7.50. |
Anonymous
| OP here, has anyone tried using fruit + dry cake mix as the filling? (like blueberries and yellow cake mix) |
Anonymous
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OP: my Chinese friends make savory mooncakes with meat. They are so much better than most of the sweet versions.
On the sweet side, Her is a link using water lily seeds, even with google translation 
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://bbs.wenxuecity.com/cooking/1414726.html&prev=search |
Anonymous
| Consider either buying or making cherry jam. The pectin in jam will gel the filling to make it closer to the date filled recipes.alternatively, you can try to alter a date filling recipe to add in cherry jam. |
Anonymous
| Use dried cherries. They are like other dried fruit: a bit leathery. Food process them. Add liquid as necessary, then put in a pan and reduce. |
Anonymous
| Lemon. Curd. |
Anonymous
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Find these cherries in the fruit section and NOT cherry pie filling. Strain them but reserve the juice if you like. Then you can add a bit of lemon juice or orange peel or whatever to get the texture and flavor you want.
You can thicken the juice into a syrup for glazing the top or for other projects! I am selfishly recommending these cherries because I use them in my black forest recipe and they are not carried by all supermarket so the more of us buying them the better! 
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Anonymous
+1 I was going to suggest jam also. If I were going to experiment, that’s where I’d start too. |