A Photo Canvas

Mid-Autumn Festival is just around the corner, which meant that my snow skin mooncake cravings would be on the rise. So much so that I just had to get my hands on some, as my mother refused to buy any due to its exorbitant pricing during recent times.

So, what's Nahele got to do when she really would love to sink her teeth into some snow skin mooncake when there aren't any at home?
Make some of course!

Thankfully, I went for a mooncake making workshop last year with Phoon Huat, as I got my butt down to the shop, bought all the ingredients that I needed, and carried all of them to Raphel's home since he kindly offered to help. Besides, it also served to be some form of couple bonding as we got our hands dirty together =)

Do not be mistaken that I wasn't wearing anything underneath!! Raphel's tee was just too big for me, as I had no intentions to turn my original black tee into a white one =P

Despite my training, or also partly because I was misled by the potency of the red dye, we miscalculated the amount that we should add into the water. That resulted in a miserable pale-ish white dough colour instead of a nice shade of pastel pink. But a headstrong me was not willing to give in to an ugly mooncake colour, as we started experimenting on how to make the dough pink.

Trial No. #1
We tried first by adding the dye directly to the dough.
Result: Bad mistake! It turned out more to be like raspberry ice-cream swirls!

Trial No. #2
Add in some more water bit by bit, of which was concentrated with red dye.
Result: It became better. But with some strong kneading required, Raphel took over as I got pretty tired. And while we finally managed to get a nice shade of pink, I guess the overflow of water made the dough a little too sticky!

So there I was, trying my darnest to mould the dough into shape, when it was stuck pretty much to my palm and the mould. Thankfully through Raphel's actions as he tried to get the mooncakes out of the mould, I managed to find a way to get past its stickiness.

For that:

And of course, that gave us a chance for some food photography, as I went on to the extent of getting utensils/props to try out some artistic shots.


Bon appetit! =D