KUALA LUMPUR: Despite having few ingredients, making moonlight cakes or Yue Guang Bing involves a rigorous and lengthy process to ensure the quality and taste are at their best.
First, coarse sugar and malt are combined and simmered over low heat for about half an hour, with constant stirring to prevent the mixture from sticking to the pot.v
After roughly 45 minutes, the mixture is poured into a container and allowed to solidify for more than a day before the kneading process begins.
Once solidified, the sugar mixture hardens in a block and is crushed, which is then mixed with an appropriate amount of glutinous rice flour, and stirred evenly until it blends evenly.
The mixture is then poured into moulds, flattened and knocked out to form the cake.
The process of imprinting the cakes with the mould must be done very carefully.
To ensure this, the edges of the cakes must be pressed firmly using the mould to ensure that the cakes remain compact. Otherwise, the moonlight cake may crumble or crack.
After removing them from the moulds, the next step is to decorate the cakes with food colouring. Red, yellow and green are the primary colours added on the cakes' surface to enhance the intricate patterns from the moulds.
A good quality brush is needed during the hand-painting process. The brush should have a sharp tip and be very absorbent.
As the colouring process is done by hand, a good quality brush will allow the accentuation of finer details on the moonlight cakes.