Lotus Seed and Salted egg yolk cookie sandwich

Happy Mid Autumn Festival! This is the time to light up lanterns and stuff your face with mooncakes. When I was young, my dad used to buy me all kinds of pretty lanterns that we would light up and hike up a hill to see the full moon. He also bought me ones that sang, but I bet he regretted that because I would play it all night until the song started to get out of tune and was really painful to the ears :D

My sister and I were also pyromaniacs back in the days and would line up waxy red candles on a mooncake tin lid and make a bonfire. Things were so simple back then haha. What I really miss the most is eating mooncakes though. Friends and relatives would gift traditional mooncakes and I loved opening them up to see the intricate design on top and then to cut it open to reveal the golden yolk in the center. I could eat a whole one and it would sit like a brick in my stomach all day (you should weigh one of these, they are so heavy!)

Anyway, I decided to create something mooncake-like and made some mooncake cookie sandwiches. It took me a month to make these, because I made my own salted eggs which took about a month of endless waiting (recipe below). The cookies are studded with salted yolks throughout and are so buttery and crumbly. They are sooo good on their own, that my bf kept eating them and I didn't have many left to sandwich >:( . I'm excited to eat these and watch the full moon today!

Lotus Seed and Salted Egg Yolk Cookie Sandwich
makes 15-20 cookie sandwiches

2 cups flour
4 tsps cornstarch
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 tbsp dried milk powder
3/4 cup salted butter, room temp
1/3 cup white sugar
2-3 tbsps maple syrup
3 salted egg yolks, cooked* (how I made the salted eggs below)

egg wash
black and white sesame seeds (optional)
sweetened lotus seed paste

1. Place salted eggs in pot and cover with water and put on high heat. When it starts boiling, start the timer to let it boil for 4.5 minutes. Once time is up, take it off the heat and dunk in ice cold water.
2. Sift flour, cornstarch, baking powder and soda and milk powder in a large bowl and set aside. Beat softened butter with sugar until light, stir in maple syrup. Stir dry mix to wet ingredients gently, until it comes together into one lump of dough. (if the dough doesn't come together, add a little bit of vegetable oil)
3. Spoon out cooked egg yolks (some white is fine), and crumble coarsely with a fork. Fold into cookie dough. Make sure you have some chunks scattered throughout, because it is absolutely divine to taste the salted yolk here and there in the buttery cookie.
4. I used mooncake molds to get the cool flower pattern on top. But if you don't have one, then roll out dough to 1/4" thick. Cut out to any shape you want. Place on lined baking trays and chill them for 30minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 350F. Beat 1 egg to make the egg wash. Brush liberally on top of cookie cut outs. Sprinkle on black and white sesame seeds if desired.
6. Bake for 18-22mins or until nicely golden on top. Let it cool at least 10 minutes on the tray before moving because they are pretty fragile out of the oven.
7. You can definitely make your own lotus seed paste or buy a can of it in your local Chinese supermarket. Pipe some onto the cooled cookies and sandwich them. 

*I actually made my own salted eggs using extra-large chicken eggs, instead of the traditional duck egg. You just need a ratio of 1:4 salt to water ratio (so 1 cup salt for 4 cups of water), and place your eggs into the mix. I also placed a ziploc filled with water on the top, so the eggs wouldn't float in the salty water. I then put a lid on it and stored it in on top of my fridge for a month. The yolks when cooked came out really nicely bright orange/red and salty :D