Of course, such an endeavour (it is a complicated recipe!) wasn't without complications. Looking for candied wintermelon took quite awhile, simply because I had to travel further in town to get some. I eventually found some for a low price at a Chinese herbal shop.
Issue #2 was trying to figure out the conversions as I didn't have a kitchen scale. I ended up using three different websites in order to convert everything (you can visit them here: one, two, and three).
Onwards and forwards.
The water and oil doughs were more difficult to make than I expected. Seriously, how hard can mixing flour and oil be? The problem was that more oil was needed to make the oil dough, and less water was needed to make the water dough. I had to make the water dough twice because the first time, I just dumped the water into my mixer. I would recommend for each dough, to mix all the dry ingredients first, and slowly add oil or water as needed to make a nice dough.
I also made the doughs the day before and let them rest in the fridge overnight. It made the dough nice and easy to work with. I also couldn't figure out which dough was on the outside and which was in the inside, but the textures of the dough solved that for me. The oil dough was crumbly, and impossible to roll out, while the water dough was soft and elastic-y. So, the oil dough went inside the water dough.
Since I didn't have a kitchen scale, there was no way I could divide the dough into 10 g portions, so I just eyeballed it. I ended up dividing each dough into 11 portions, but I think 10 portions would be better for future reference.
The wintermelon mixture was a big headache as well. Again, there seemed to be too much water in the recipe, and I couldn't figure out what "boiled drinking water" meant. Is it boiling water, or cooled boiled water? I ended up using boiling water. I first creamed the sugar with the margarine, added all the other ingredients, and slowly added boiling water until I had a thick mixture. I wasn't sure how to "knead" this mixture, so I just mixed it well. It got thicker as it sat, so maybe I was supposed to use the full amount of water.
The assembly of the pastries was pretty fun until I got to adding the wintermelon mixture. I couldn't make it work properly, and if anyone has any tips on how to wrap a thick liquid mixture in a pastry, please let me know! I just sealed it the best I could, and hoped for the best.
The egg wash is absolutely essential, and gave a nice colour to the final result.
After baking, I was relieved to find only one casualty, the rest didn't leak. After letting it cool a bit, I shared one with my little critics. The pastry was definitely flaky, but not much flavour. It didn't seem as flaky as the pastries I buy in bakeries, but I think it's probably because of the fat content in the doughs. The wintermelon mixture was the right sweetness, and blended well with the pastry. I probably should have flattened the pastries more prior to baking, to have a more typical spherical shape.
My little critics enjoyed the pastry, and asked for a second after they polished off the first one.
I wouldn't say that this recipe was a complete success, but the results were quite decent. I might make them again, considering I still have half a bag of candied wintermelon.
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