Full Recipe
Author
Food Network Kitchen | 2024-06-20
Description
These jelly mooncakes are lightly sweet and refreshing, a jewel-like addition to a Mid-Autumn Festival dinner table — or just a lovely snack or dessert on their own. The combination of honey-sweet longan fruit (similar to lychees), dried osmanthus flowers steeped into a tea and red goji berries is a popular one that's often served as a jellied dim sum offering. In this version, it's molded in festive mooncake molds and set with just enough agar agar and konnyaku powders (both plant-based gelatin substitutes) to form shimmering cakes with a wonderful bouncy texture. Mooncakes are an important part of the Mid-Autumn Festival celebrated in China and throughout Asia, so much so that it's sometimes referred to as the Mooncake Festival. Although the cakes are traditionally made with pastry baked around rich fillings, jelly versions have become popular with home cooks as an easier and lighter alternative. They're also a fun way to use decorative mooncake molds any time of the year, and since they're not set with gelatin, they'll even be vegan if you seek out sugar that's labeled vegan.
