Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
Do you have any idea why we celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival?
This festival is very much celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month which is also the full moon night. The 3 main reasons behind this celebration are :
1) Gathering for family and friends and also means harvesting crops
2) Thanksgiving to give thanks for the harvest or harmonious reunions
3) Praying for good things in one’s life (eg. babies, good fortune, career, love life, etc)
There are many interpretations, histories and mythologies of how this festival comes about.
Some call it lantern festival as part of the tradition of carrying brightly lit lanterns with riddles written on them and people guessing and solving them.
Some call it mooncake festival because we eat mooncakes only during this festival. In Chinese, the roundness of mooncakes signifies completeness and reunion among family members. It is a tradition to give mooncakes to family members to maintain unity.
For the kids, this period is a favourite to them because they get to play with lanterns, sparklers, candles, and eat mooncakes.
And for me, I enjoy carrying a candle lit lantern and see how the candlelight flickers in the dark as it shines from the inside of the paper lantern.
This year, since I am not too capable of making a DIY lantern for the kids, I found a super duper simple recipe to make a chocolate coated ice-cream mooncake with the kids.
Recipe
(makes 6 ice-cream mooncakes)
Things you need:
A set of mooncake moulds or any mould you like (preferably silicone mould which makes an easy job in removing the mooncakes)
2 or 3 bars of 200mg chocolate (get your favourite pure choc bars without nuts or fruits, we used Van Houten and it was perfect!)
1 tub of ice-cream (any flavour, we use mint ice-cream and cookies n cream)
Steps
Melt the chocolates
Line the melted choc on the bottom and sides of the moulds
Refrigerate for 10 minutes
Take out and line a second layer of melted choc
Refrigerate for 10 minutes
Scoop in ice-cream and freeze
Pour a layer of melted choc to seal the moulds, this will be the base (I skipped this step because I ran out of melted choc! But it still tastes great and looks great!)
It’s so SIMPLE, isn’t it?!
Here are some details to take note of:
Melting the chocolates
Put the break up pieces of chocolates in a bowl and put into a microwave oven. Melt over bursts of 20 secs follow by 10 secs. I started by 20secs on high heat, but it did not melt, so I put on another 20secs on high heat. This time it started to melt and I continued heating in bursts of 10 secs high heat. Be careful not to overheat or else it will get burnt. You can also double boil over a pot of boiling water to melt the chocolates. However, I find microwave much faster.
Line the melted chocolate on the moulds
The chocolate will stick to the sides but we find it not too easy to fill in the small gaps here and there. So, it is better not to scrimp on the chocolate and line a thicker layer. Once, you are done with this, put into the fridge to refrigerate for about 10 minutes, take out and line a second layer of chocolate again.
The chocolate base
I skipped this step because I ran out of melted choc as we worked on 2 sets of moulds (one for XX and one for YH). You need to have enough melted choc for this step because upon contact with the cold ice-cream, the chocolate solidifies very quickly. Pouring abundance of melted choc would solve the problem.
Taking out the frozen moulds
Be prepared to wait for at least 24 hours before you take out the ice-cream mooncakes from the moulds. I took them out after only 8 hours and I find that the ice-cream was still not as frozen and started to get soft fairly quickly within seconds. When it was left for another 12 hours, it was just perfect texture!
We like the thickness of the chocolate layer. The amount used here will be sufficient to have a thickness like the Magnum ice-cream outer layer choc. In fact, it tastes like Magnum!
Right now, our kitchen is our favourite bonding place 🙂 Too bad I do not have an oven to do more baking stuff with the kids. Well, perhaps I will buy an oven after all. But l will have to try to find a space for it.
So, till then, if you have a simple no-bake recipe, please share with me!
Yum! I am so trying this!
Try it and look forward to seeing your version! Bet it’ll be better than mine with your great culinary skills 🙂
I had to Pin this to Pinterest, because what a great idea! I’ve never heard of the festival, and after seeing the lanterns you did get, I am glad you couldn’t make those from scratch! They are awesome! I have some plain silicone cupcake molds, but I bet they would work just fine, and I could always decorate the tops! I may be making these soon!
It will be the same! Any mould is fine! Look forward to seeing your cupcake ice-cream!
Wow, I didn’t think that it would be so simple (well, at least you made it look simple!) Thanks for sharing this recipe. Pinning it!
Hehe! Thanks! It is really simple 🙂 Try it!
Ooh! Ok, we have a new recipe for the kids to try this weekend. (We are clearing out the room with the most junk in it so we’ll need a good treat to follow up.)
(I hope that’s not something we’re not supposed to do during this festival period. Don’t tell me!)
Oh you are doing the spring cleaning now! No, it’s only forbidden on Chinese New Year period. I bet you deserve a treat with the hard work 🙂
Phew!
A colleague was saying recently how they had to finish moving house before the Hungry Ghost Festival. I asked him what would happen if they didn’t and he looked as if it was an odd kind of question. Apparently it’s “just what you do”.
Oh everyone avoids doing major life events in that month. The 8th lunar month like the mid-autumn would be a good month to wed or move house 🙂 Clearing junk is good whole year round except for the 15 days of Chinese New Year. So you are safe haha!
In future I’ll just ask you before I start anything to make sure! 🙂
Haha! I hope I can help! You are really very localized. I bet you read Neil Humphrey’s column. Sometimes you remind me of his humorous take on Singapore 🙂
No, I don’t – perhaps I should start!
I love moon cakes! I loved the moon cake festival when we lived in Taiwan. These ones look even more amazing!
Thanks! I wonder how Taiwan celebrates this festival. So, did you try the moon cakes? They have different flavours here and the boxes are amazingly designed!
We usually had a dinner with a Taiwanese family that we were friends with. They have us moon cakes, although I am not sure what kind they were. They were deliciousn
That’s funny, I meant delicious. 🙂
Haha!
Reblogged this on Expat Dad SG and commented:
Love the “sharing our culture” style posts.
Thanks! Glad you like it 🙂
Hi, I was wondering if it would be better to use Nutella? So you don’t actually need to melt the chocolates. But the moon cakes look great! 🙂
Hi Guoxiang, maybe you can since it is also chocolate! However I am not too sure if it can stay frozen to hold the ice-cream since it has much oil in it. If you do try it using Nutella, please share your experience with me here 🙂 Thanks for suggesting 🙂
Hi Christy, I’ve tried using Nutella but you’re right. It doesn’t freeze so well but it reminds me of the mini box spread you can get in provision shops as you scoop the chocolates. Ha
Thanks for taking time to tell me your experience and sharing it here! Try using melted chocolates next time. I think Nutella has too much oil to maintain its fluidity for easy spreading. But it was a creative idea. Maybe you can make partly frozen Nutella snack 🙂
Chocolate and ice cream, sounds like something that will be loved by EVERYBODY! Need to try that one next time we have party.