[Review] Animal Wagashi Baking Workshop @ LearningArtZ

The Mid-Autumn Festival, for me, is always a busy time to bake mooncakes for family and friends. 

While I am very familiar with baking traditional mooncakes, I was recently intrigued by a baking class "Korean Wagashi – Cute Animals Workshop (Mid-Autumn Special)". The cute Tarepanda, Totoro and Doraemon characters were after all well-loved cartoon characters that I grew up with, so I decided to sign up for it.

The instructor, Chef Cindy Chung (钟婉予老師) from Taiwan, was specially invited by Learning ArtZ, a baking and culinary studio, to teach in Singapore that weekend. As it was a great opportunity, I thought why not learn something unique and cute from an overseas instructor?

Wagashi are a traditional type of Japanese confectionary. Usually served in mini bite sizes, they are eaten as a snack/ dessert with hot tea. Chef Cindy learnt to make these wagashi in Korea using natural food colourings and adapted them into Mid Autumn Festival snacks filled with our familiar lotus paste.

First, Chef Cindy demonstrated the steps and highlighted to us what to look out for. I liked how she shared various tips with us, especially if we wanted to adapt/ replace some of the ingredients or recreate the recipe at home. Within the 3.5-hour class, we learnt how to bake four characters - Totoro, Tarepanda, Cow and Dinosaur.

To make learning easier, Chef Cindy broke down the whole baking process into segments, i.e. after demonstrating a few steps, we proceeded to our stations to recreate the same steps on our own. As it was a small class, Chef Cindy came around to guide us, especially with some of the more delicate moulding parts. Overall, I found it a very therapeutic session. 

Above were the unbaked animal pastries made by my classmates and me, each delicately filled with different fillings - white lotus paste, pandan paste and mung bean filling. I think we all did a great job. So, in they went into the ovens next!

For the final touches such as the zig-zag patterns on Totoro's stomach and the eyes on the various characters, we were given a choice to use either the edible food ink marker or try out a torching technique using the sharp edges of metallic tools. The children were advised to use the marker, while we adults took on the alternative method.

Each student brought back four pairs of animal wagashis. Everyone's was successful and they were just too cute to be eaten! :)

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