jane’s cooking 🍲🥢

枣泥!! zǎo ní — red date paste

GAHHH spent my Saturday making 枣泥!! 妈妈 and I usually get the 99 ranch date paste mooncakes every mid autumn festival. BUT this year my mom couldn’t find any and 99 ranch told her that they’re DISCONTINUING the date paste mooncakes ………. UGH!! the 99 ranch date paste mooncakes are our favorite… so I decided, why not try making my own date paste??? (it’s not like we can’t get it elsewhere, just 99 ranch made it super well haha)

making date paste is an entire labor of love. I’m realizing the date paste we usually eat is probably more artificial and definitely not fully made from dates. if it were, they would probably charge $15+ a piece… lol that being said, homemade date paste is so fragrant and delicious. it has that fruit fragrance but also a bit of a nutty earthy flavor too, and I barely added any sugar because dates are naturally so sweet. SO worth the effort, and now 妈妈 and I have date paste for days 😎😎

pics capture the steps, but started off by buying some dried dates, then the steps are the following — wash, pit the dates (SO time consuming, but didn’t buy the pre-pitted dates because those are a lot more dry / less fresh), boil the dates, pulverize the dates, sieve the skin, and then cook the paste down until it becomes thick and solid (45+ min of just cooking it down).