Recipe development for this year’s specialty Mid Autumn Festival mooncakes was a doozy. Each flavor ended up being really different. I love where all of them ended up, but the variation between them meant a lot of time went into perfecting each mooncake.
Before I got to testing recipes, I had to figure out what flavors I wanted to tackle. The process started in April with a draft email. (Why did I start this in a draft email? I don't know, but I eventually came to my senses and moved to the Cloud.) I started by listing possible flavor combinations and got to work.
Very early on I knew I wanted to make a black sesame with toasted coconut flavor. From there, I knew wanted to make a flavor with mung bean where the bean would shine. In the past, I've usually used mung bean as a base for tea flavors. But this year, beans would rule!
The fourth flavor was a toss up. I had NO idea what to do for the fourth flavor for a few weeks. At first I thought I would do something with a certain delicious, sweet root vegetable. Everyone that tried the mystery flavor LOVED it. Friends literally fought over them. But after a month of trial and error, the texture not coming out quite right, it becoming really soggy really fast, that flavor didn't end up panning out. Though it may end up out in the near future 😉.
The mystery flavor in question reducing in the oven!
For the first month at least, I made test batches multiple times a week. The biggest issue for the first three flavors wasn't making something that tasted good. The greatest challenge was making mooncakes where all the flavors were balanced. For instance, the black sesame + toasted coconut flavor either had too much coconut or an imperceptible amount of coconut.
These test batches were also happening alongside Mid Autumn production prep, rebranding, and all the various logistics that go into both of those things. So it was a hectic time.
Sometime in late May, after many trials, I thought of the brownie flavor. A customer had previously asked if I made mooncakes with brownies in them, and at the time I didn't. During all this recipe development, production, rebranding, and the like, I'd also been making my way through Philip Khoury's vegan baking recipe book, A New Way to Bake. In it, there's a fudge brownie recipe that I LOVE. And as an added twist, I thought, why not make it gluten free and add in some matcha? And for that reason, it took me over a month to rework and perfect the brownie recipe.
The first brownie test batches had edges that could cut glass.
Even though the brownie edges kept coming out rock hard in the early test batches, that wasn't the most difficult part of this recipe. Just cut off the edges! The biggest issues with this recipe, outside of perfecting the gluten free texture, was again balancing the chocolate flavor with the matcha chocolate.
At first, I thought it would be cool to make a matcha + white chocolate ganache in the center. It was a mess. Plus, the matcha flavor would somehow either disappear or take over depending on what bit you got. Then, I I put a square slab of matcha chocolate in the center of the mooncake. But once the chocolate was in the mooncake, it was hard to tell where it was which made it difficult to make a nice imprint with the mooncake mold. Finally, after a month or so, I found a way to make matcha chocolate chunks just big enough to be tasted, but not too big to be overpowering.
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By this time it was early July. And finally all four mooncakes were done. Now it was time to get ready for the festival! That meant multiple things needed to happen at once:
- Securing a license for national shipping
- Pre-making fillings and doughs as much as possible
- Finalizing the branding assets and all brand touchpoints out in the world
- Scheduling social media posts & emails to announce the rebrand and pre-orders
- Finalizing then order the new gift box designs with time for them to arrive to pack orders
- Updating and ordering new packaging stickers and other assets with time for them to arrive to pack orders
200lb+ of mung bean paste ready to be reduced!
Needless to say, this past summer had a lot packed into it. But I'm happy with where we ended up. And I hope that with all of this adventure, you all are able to enjoy these beautiful, delicious mooncakes with your loved ones for the Mid Autumn Festival. Thank you for reading and following along the journey!
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