DIY dog-friendly mooncakes with toddler

I’ve always ordered dog-friendly mooncakes for Donna in the past. But I have long wanted to try to DIY and make pet-safe mooncakes for my dog. But what with one thing and another across the months and years, the mooncake mould ended up being stashed in the back of the drawer for the longest time. Oops!

So finally I took it out to make some super fuss-free homemade mooncakes for Donna. Erm, of course fuss-free also means it’s not as erm… professional as the dog bakeries out there so I’m just glad Donna doesn’t have much standards when it comes to food. HAHAHAHA!

Ingredients for our DIY dog-friendly mooncakes

The whole process was fuss-free because we always have a stash of hard-boiled eggs in the fridge, canned salmon in the storeroom so the only thing I really needed to cook were the purple sweet potatoes. :)

This is the no salt added wild pink canned salmon that I used.

Learnings from my first DIY dog-friendly mooncakes experience

Some notes based on our first dog-friendly mooncake making experience.

1. It is better to press harder than worry about whether the sweet potato will get lodged in the fine grooves of the mould and not come out nice because you press too hard. I suppose people who sell dog mooncakes for a living will have more tips and tricks to have more refined looking mooncakes, but we are just making for fun at home so this is all I can say from this once experience. :P
2. It may be better to use 1/4 of an egg yolk for these mini mooncakes because I use 1/2 an egg yolk and there wasn’t much space left for the salmon!
3. Never mind if you don’t have enough mashed sweet potato, shorter mooncakes don’t look that bad too. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Montessori at Home – My toddler’s involvement making mooncakes

Little P has been working with play dough and making pretend cookies with them in the last month. So I thought he would want to help but he declined. Instead he wanted to take the observer role. And that’s ok too. I am happy to model for him to observe.

There is in the child a special kind of sensitivity which leads him to absorb everything about him, and it is this work of observing and absorbing that alone enables him to adapt himself to life. 

MONTESSORI, M. THE ABSORBENT MIND, P. 57

While working on shaping the ingredients into the mooncake shape, we talked.

Many opportunities to introduce various concepts during the process of making mooncakes

Why do we put egg yolks in Donna’s mooncakes?

For this question, I thought it is quite possible to talk about sharing and also show him what is “half”.

“Because mama likes egg yolks in traditional mooncakes, so mama wants to put egg yolks in Donna’s too. Mama likes to share what I like with the people and dogs around me. Watch mama cut the egg yolk in half. Mama will put half an egg yolk in each mooncake. ”

I also wondered out loud how much is too much or too little when it comes to packing the little balls of ingredients wrapped in sweet potato into the mould to shape into mooncakes.

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Later I found this dog blogger used a ratio of 3:1 skin to filling i.e. 30g sweet potato to 10g ingredients. While this noob baker used 30g sweet potato to 20g ingredients.

Next year, I plan to take out my weighing scale so Little P and I can measure things out and talk numbers!

Why did mama go “haha”?

Here’s an opportunity to talk about feelings and building a growth mindset.
“Because it came out looking not so nice so mama feels embarrassed. But that is ok too because this is the first time we are doing this. This is how we learn. It doesn’t have to be perfect the first time. Let’s try again.”

Note: Above is not like a model answer. But just a reflection of what I said to him, and how I think I could further improve what I said to him. Based on what I remembered of our conversation.

We made mid-autumn festival mooncakes for our dog!

This is how our final dog-friendly mooncakes look like.

“Oh look Donna looks really excited to try the mooncakes! Her mouth is hanging open as she smiles! Would you like to feed Donna some of the mooncake?”

Even though he wasn’t too keen too help with the actual making of the mooncake, Little P was happy to feed Donna some of our freshly pressed mooncakes for dogs.

The remainder goes into the freezer so that Donna can have them over the weekend and also on the actual day of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

Also check out these Montessori-friendly activities for the Mid-Autumn festival season

• Mid-Autumn Festival stringing lanterns activity for toddlers – Montessori at home
• 月儿圆圆 – A Simple Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival Song for Toddlers

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