Review & cooking: Peninsula Hotel's moon cake and sausage bun at home

I know that I have been quiet, partly coz I lack of motivation to blog and I still have one last post on Japan waiting! That was until I met up with Tee from Passports and Postcards last Wednesday. I asked her if we could meet up at Siam Paragon as they are having moon cake festival there and I wanted to buy moon cakes from the Peninsula hotel, she was kind and agreed to meet me there.

I must tell you, I am not Chinese so moon cake and me doesn't have that close-knit relationship. I only know moon cakes that produce for the mass, like those chestnut moon cake from S&P. Recently, I found out that original moon cake is actually made with custard filling and one of the best is by Oriental Hotel which you have to make reservation in order to buy it (and even now, reservation is closed coz the orders are more than their capacity to produce). I did some research and found that one suggested that the one from Peninsula hotel here is also good. So I set my eyes on Peninsula's one but was gonna browse around first before buying. However, when I got there and got to taste their moon cake, I decided to buy it right away!

the package

There were 8 small moon cakes inside their sophisticated box. This box costs Baht520 which is quite pricey if you compare that to S&P and other mass brand one (which is about Baht95 for one big moon cake). However, taste wise, it cannot be compared, AT ALL.

It was custard filling mixing with salted egg yolk. The taste was just right, sweet enough. It was a happy buy for me, though expensive. But let's look that I would only get it once a year so that's not a big deal, isn't it?

Now on to the cooking bit. I was reading through Yumeko-san's blog, A Dream of Tokyo, and she has shared Bacon and Cheese bread roll by rice cooker recipe so I decided to make some adjustment by making it "Sausage Bun" instead. For her original recipe, please go to http://bittenbefore.com/tokyolife/2011/08/30/rice-cooker-recipe-cheese-bacon-bread-rolls/.

Ingredients:
150g pancake mix
60ml milk
15g melted unsalted butter
sausages
salt to taste

I simply mixed pancake mix, milk, butter and salt together until it formed into a dough. Then I spreaded them out and put sausage on top of the dough and rolled it up.

After that, I just put it into my rice cooker bowl and just pressed "cook". You don't have to worry about it getting burned or anything. Just let the rice cooker do everything for you.

The outcome bread is whiter than general bread. The texture is more heavy, not my liking. Taste wise was okay. I think it is easy way to cook bun if you are craving but I would find the recipe for more lighter texture next time.