Meet the moon cake: China’s version of the Christmas fruitcake–a dense, filled pastry that is sliced and served every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival, a Chinese holiday that honors longevity and family unity on the day the moon is brightest. Though some say moon cakes resemble chewy hockey pucks in shape, weight and flavor, the 700-year-old tradition of gifting and eating moon cakes has stayed firmly lodged in China’s cultural gullet because the unwieldy pastry was the tool of revolutionaries–according to an age-old anecdote.

In the late 1300s, following 97 years of Mongolian rule in Northern China (the Yuan Dynasty), Han Chinese rebels cooked up a last-ditch effort to drive out the invaders. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, the rebels distributed hundreds of moon cakes to local families under the pretense of celebrating the holiday and the longevity of Mongolian rule. The Mongolians didn’t eat moon cakes, so they didn’t get the memo hidden inside the gooey centers: Kill the Mongols on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, thousands of villagers ate the evidence and rose up to chase the invaders out of China. The rebel leader, Zhu Yuan Zhang, became the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty.

By Joanne Yao
Special correspondent Joanne Yao, a freelance writer based in Beijing, reports on business developments in China and other parts of Asia.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26837474/

The subject of additives is a very technical one and covers a broad spectrum of products ranging from emulsifiers, gelling agents, sweeteners, cake and dough improvers, flavor enhancers, and others. I do not claim to be an expert in these areas nor is this blog posting intended to be an exhaustive discussion on all the additives used by professionals. My objective is, based on some of the additives that I have used in the past, to provide a brief insight into how pastry chefs achieve professioal results using some of these additives.

Pastry chefs use many types of additives to enhance flavor, extend shelf life, and improve texture. Some of the more commonly known additives that are easily obtainable in the retail market are items like flavoring oils, liquid glucose, sheet gelatin, bread softeners and dough improvers. Very common within professional pastry kitchens but very difficult to find in the retail market are items such as trimoline, ice cream and sorbet stabilizers, atomized glucose, and pectin NH. A more obscure additive that I have used in the past that is not a common sight even within professional kitchens is an emulsifier called Peco 50.

As you can imagine, different additives are used in different situations to obtain specific results. Additives are generally used to obtain results that will typically fall within these three categories:

- Extend product shelf life
- Improve product texture and volume
- Enhance taste

Trimoline is a very common and extremely versatile sweetening additive that is used in confectionary, cake, and ice cream making to add sweetness and to help retain moisture which, in turn, extends the shelf life of the product.

Products like cake improvers will help to retard moisture loss and increase the volume of sponge cake batters. Emulsifiers such as Peco 50 will help to reduce mixing times, retard moisture loss, extend shelf life and homogenize cake batters for better stability and tolerance.

Very high quality flavoring products like those from Sevarome can elevate the taste of the finished product and provide that “X-factor” that could otherwise not be achieved with more mediocre flavoring agents.

Unless you are operating a pastry business, you will not need many of these additives if you are baking at home and will be consuming your goods within a very short timeframe. Many of the additives are designed to be used in very high volume production environments where goods produced will eventually be stored for sale over an extended period of time. Also, restaurant pastry kitchens will use additives to produce certain effects for their plated creations that are typically not feasible or practical to be reproduced at home. Molecular gastronomy is one such practice that comes to mind.

When used properly, I do believe that pastry and baking additives are essential ingredients that can lift a product from mediocrity to excellence. Ultimately, the end result is to use the right balance of ingredients to produce goods that are highly palatable and visually appealing at the same time.

I’ve provided a list of a few vendors who supply additives to the professional market:

Danisco
Danisco A/S
Langebrogade 1
1001 Copenhagen
Denmark
Tel: +45 3266 2000
Email: info@danisco.com
Web: Danisco
Presence in more than 40 countries

Sevarome
Z.A La Guide 1 43200
Yssingeaux Z.I. La Guide
France
Tél : +33 4 71 59 04 78
Fax : +33 4 71 65 54 24
Email: info@sevarome.com
Web: Sevarome

Patisfrance
Parc d’affaires SILIC
46 Rue de Montlhery- BP 80179
F 94563 Rungis Cedex
France
Tel: +33 (0)1 45 60 83 95
Fax: +33 (0)1 45 60 41 44
Email: info-export@puratos.com
Web: Patisfrance

Aromatic
Bryggvägen 12-14
SE-117 68 Stockholm
Sweden
Tel: +46-8-681 56 00
Fax: +46-8-18 29 79
Email: info@aromatic.se
Web:Aromatic

Source: http://stickofachef.wordpress.com/2008/09/21/baking-and-pastry-additives-for-the-professional/