Piggy Mooncakes (猪仔月饼) using 30g Mold from Phoon Huat #piggymooncake #pigmooncake

The eerie 7th month is finally over and with the upcoming mid-autumn festival, many avid home bakers are ramping up their production for mooncakes! I would of course be baking some traditional mooncakes using this recipe and it's common to have a little bit of leftover dough and filling.

This is when this old school wooden piglet mold comes into the picture. Purchased from Phoon Huat at less than S$5.00, each can fit, comfortably, 30 grams of dough and filling and you can adjust accordingly to your preference! 

Like many others, I love more filling though dough and hence, would use a dough-filling ratio of 10:20. Frankly, leftover dough is more an issue for me although you can still freeze them for re-use in the near future. You may also consider piggy mooncake that's just made of dough with no filling.

Using a cling wrap and a rolling pin, flatten the 10-gram dough. Do follow this recipe if you would like to know how I made the dough. This would allow you to easier wrap the filling.

After wrapping, it's important to dust with fine flour and made sure the dough has a leathery 'feel' before you put t into the mold. Failure to do that would result in the dough sticking to the dough and you would need time and effort to dig them out using a toothpick.

Molding time! As the "nose" is the thinnest area, do ensure the cavity is given due attention. If not, you would be faced with an "injured" piglet that would not be suitable as giveaways. 

Ta-dah! Not the prettiest piglet around and it kind of reminded me of the suckling pig that used to be served in many Chinese wedding banquets. I know some talented bakers would hand-mold the piglet mooncakes; pity I don't possess such skill! 

A closer look.

Wrapped up the filling with the dough using the ratio shared earlier. This was done as our dear Jovyn would like to have a go in giving the final makeover for the plain-looking ball. 

The use of wooden molds and the subsequent loud knocking were part and parcel of traditional mooncake making in the past but it's not that easy. For me, the mooncake-press is more straightforward in saving both time and effort.

Jovyn was actually pretty good for a newbie! 

Time to bake! As mentioned in the recipe, spray with water before throwing them in a pre-heated 170-degree-celcius oven! I go 15-15-15 rule; 15 minutes of baking, take out and leave them for 15 minutes, brush egg wash before putting them back into the oven for another 15 minutes! 

Cooked piglets.

Ready for immediate consumption but do note that the texture might be a tad crunchy right after baking. For traditional mooncakes, we would usually store them in an air-tight container for about 3 days so that the texture would soften. However, Jovyn loves the piglets better in their crunchier state.