Golden Syrup (For Mooncakes) 月饼糖浆
This homemade Golden Syrup for Mooncakes is amazingly easy to make. All you need are sugar, water and some lemon slices. This syrup has a beautiful golden amber colour with an amazingly thick honey-like texture and sweet lemony fragrance. This is the key ingredient for popular asian pastry and desserts, such as traditional baked mooncakes.
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Servings: 45 mooncakes
Ingredients
Ingredients:
- 1 kg sugar
- 750 ml water, 3 cups
- 4 slices lemon , cut into ½ cm thick
Have ready all ingredients needed to make golden syrup: sugar, water and lemon. Cut 4 slices of lemon, about ½ cm thick each.
Place a medium-size pot on the stove. Add in the sugar, water and lemon slices. Stir a bit.
Turn heat to high. Stir to mix well. Cook till the syrup comes to a boil, stirring occasionally till all the sugar has dissolved.
Then lower the flame to low. Continue to simmer gently (small bubbles) till the syrup turns a rich amber colour, about 1 hour later.
At this stage, test if the sugar syrup has reached the desired consistency. Drop some syrup into a bowl of water and it should spread out. When touched, you should feel syrupy at the bottom.
When done, off the flame and remove the lemon slices from the syrup. Remove the pot from the stove. Pour the hot syrup into a clean glass jar and let it cool completely before closing the jar with a secure lid. And we are done!
This golden syrup will thicken after a few days and can only be used for making mooncake skin after at least 2 weeks. So Enjoy!
Instructions
Preparing Ingredients:
Cooking Golden Syrup:
Enjoy!
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Recipe Video
Notes
- Make sure to stir well before the water boils. This prevents sugar from sticking to the bottom of the pot and ensures that it will be fully dissolved.
- Lemon is used to prevent sugar crystallization. If you find that the golden syrup has crystallized at the bottom of the container, you can transfer it back into a pot, add more lemon slices and boil again. If enough acid (lemon) is added, sugar should not crystalize.
- You can also substitute lemon with local lime. But do note that local green limes have bitter skin, so taste may be affected.
- Slice the lemon about ½ cm thick. Leave the lemon seeds intact as this works as a natural preservative for the golden syrup. Caramelised lemon slices can be used for lemon tea.
- It is recommended to boil syrup using a pot with a smaller top opening. This will prevent too much evaporation during the boiling process. Over evaporation will cause the syrup to be too thick when it turns golden brown.
- You can cook a bigger batch of golden syrup if preferred, not necessarily with just 1 kg sugar at one time. For baking mooncakes, 5kg of sugar is usually recommended at one go as the golden syrup can be kept for a long time. It gets better with time.
- To test if golden syrup is the right consistency, pour some syrup into a small bowl of tap water. If syrup spreads out in water and feels syrupy when touched, the syrup is just nice. If it solidifies into small clumps / balls, it is over-cooked. Add more water and continue to cook.
- Or, you can use the weighing method. First, measure the weight of the pot you are using. After cooking, measure again the total weight of the pot with syrup inside. To get the weight of the syrup, minus pot weight from the total weight. For the right consistency, you should get about 1.3kg of syrup for 1 kg of sugar and 750ml water. If it is less than 1.3kg, add more water and continue to boil. If more than 1.3kg, cook for a while longer.
- It is important to keep the syrup for at least 2 weeks before using it for mooncakes. If you do not keep long enough, the mooncake skin will turn out hard. The longer the syrup is kept, the better the texture of the baked mooncakes.
NUTRITION
Calories: 86kcal · Carbohydrates: 22g · Protein: 1g · Fat: 1g · Saturated Fat: 1g · Polyunsaturated Fat: 1g · Sodium: 1mg · Potassium: 1mg · Fiber: 1g · Sugar: 22g · Vitamin A: 1IU · Vitamin C: 1mg · Calcium: 1mg · Iron: 1mg