Cocktail Buns

So I went to Hong Kong and Seoul for three weeks in October, blog posts coming soon(ish) I promise. But before that I want to tell you how I coped with nasty homesickness and post-holiday depression - I made bread.

A few months ago I joined Band of Bakers - a south east London baking club. We meet up at one of the local restaurants or cafes for a monthly themed baking gathering. From green tea Swiss roll to strawberry and cream choux buns, it soon became an essential event that I look forward to attending every month. There was a special event in October where the theme was enriched breads i.e. breads that have butter, sugar and eggs. I have never been very good at making bread, me and yeast just do not get on very well… So in order to hide my weakness (not competitive at all), I baked cocktail buns – a Hong Kong classic that no one from the BoB would be familiar with, therefore not knowing how they are supposed to taste. Genius? Yes.

A cocktail bun 雞尾包 is a sweet bun with a coconut filling, topped with sesame seeds and two pastry lines made from butter, flour and sugar. Originally local bakers mixed up leftover ingredients to create the filling, hence the name ‘cocktail’. It is one of the must-eat Hong Kong bakery items alongside egg tarts 蛋撻 and pineapple buns 菠蘿包.

I adapted the recipe from Christine’s blog (an excellent site for various Chinese recipes). She uses a special bread starter called Yudane 湯種, a mixture of hot water and flour, which apparently gives extra sweetness and softness to the bread. I have not tried making the bread without it so I cannot tell you the difference, but the result was very close to the texture I was aiming for. I used my bread machine to knead and raise the dough before shaping.

Cocktail buns

Makes 10 buns

Yudane:

50g Super Strong White Bread Flour

250ml Water

Dough:

350g Super Strong White Bread Flour

55g Caster sugar

5g Salt

56g Egg (beaten)

125ml Full Fat Milk

120g Yudane

5g Instant Yeast

30g Butter (room temperature)

A few drops of vanilla extract

Filling:

60g Butter

60g Caster Sugar

60g Egg (beaten)

80g Sweetened Coconut (shredded)

Sugar syrup:

1 tsp Caster Sugar

2 tsp Water

Toppings:

20g Egg (beaten)

5g Caster Sugar

15g Butter (room temperature)

10g Plain flour

To make the Yudane, mix the flour and water in a saucepan until fully incorporated. Put the pan over a medium heat, keep stirring to prevent any lumps. Remove from heat as soon as the liquid starts to thicken.

Place the Yudane in a bowl and then cover it with cling film. Set aside until it reaches room temperature.

To make the dough, place all the ingredients (except the butter) in a bread machine in this order: milk, egg, Yudane, vanilla extract, salt, sugar, flour and yeast. Set and start the ‘dough’ function of the bread machine, and then add the butter when a rough dough is formed. Let the machine continue the kneading until the dough is smooth and elastic.

Use the ‘raise’ function of the bread machine for proofing (see your bread maker’s instructions for the exact timing). Or you can place the dough in a greased glass bowl, cover it with a damp towel and then proof until it doubled in size.

To make the filling, beat the butter and sugar in a bowl. Add the egg followed by the coconut. Place the mixture in a square/rectangular container, and then put it in the fridge until the first proofing is done.

Transfer the dough onto a floured surface. ’Punch’ the dough to release air, and then divide it into 10 small portions, around 75g each. Cover them with cling film and then rest for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, take the hardened filling mixture out of the fridge, and then cut it into 10 strips.

Use a rolling pin to roll the dough (away from you) to a long flat shape, place 1 strip of filling on the top of the dough, and then roll inwards into a tube shape.

Place the filled dough, seal side down, on a greased baking tray (I use a Swiss roll tray). Cover it with cling film and a wet towel on top for second proofing. It normally takes around an hour for the dough to double in size.

Preheat a fan oven to 180C. Make the pastry lines by beating the plain flour, sugar and butter together. Spoon the pastry mix into a small piping bag.

Make the sugar syrup by heating water and sugar in a saucepan. Boil for 2 minutes until the sugar dissolves completely. Set aside to cool.

Brush the dough with egg. Pipe two lines onto the dough using the pastry mix prepared earlier, and then sprinkle some sesame seeds on top.

Bake the bread in the oven for 30 minutes until golden. Brush the sugar syrup onto the buns, then return to the oven for further 2 to 3 minutes. Rest on a rack to cool down.

Best served while still warm! Enjoy!

Snacking in Hong Kong

Hong Kong is my home. If I had to make a list of the luckiest things that have happened to me, one of them would be being born in Hong Kong. Food has always been an important part of Chinese culture, we catch up with friends over a meal, celebrate special occasions with a banquet, we even have iconic food items for traditional festivals (e.g. Mooncake for Mid-Autumn Festival), any excuse to eat really...

There are seven million people living in this small city, nearly half of them live on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, and the other half live in New Territories. Many people have to work long hours, so sometimes cooking at home is considered to be a hassle, or there is simply not enough time to cook after a long day at work, so eating out has become a big part of daily life for the locals. Because of the rich food culture, and given the history of Hong Kong, it is not surprising to find cuisine from all over the world, along side regional Chinese eateries.

I have been to Hong Kong twice this year (August and September) since I started this blog, as it is so easy (and cheap!) to eat out, I hardly had a home cooked dinner when I was there. I am going to introduce you some of my local favourite cheap eats, snacks and cake shops in this post, mainly form my home town Yuen Long. There will be more restaurants in central Hong Kong featured in upcoming posts.

Lo Poh Beng (Wife Cake)
There are different versions of the story of where the name ‘wife cake’ came from, the most common one tells of a man who dedicated the cakes he made to his wife, because she sold herself as a slave in order to get medicine to heal his father’s illness.

Hang Heung cake shop is well known for their traditional wife cakes, it has been in business for more than ninety years! The bakery produces over twenty thousand wife cakes daily to cope with the demand from locals and tourists. The pastry is puff and flaky, and is filled with mild winter melon paste, best served hot.

恒香老餅家 Hang Heung Cake Shop, 64 Castle Peak Road, Yuen Long

Daan Tart (Egg Tart)
You can find egg tarts everywhere in Hong Kong - Chinese restaurants (as a dim sum item), traditional and modern bakeries - this shows how popular these little baked egg tarts are. Apparently (and not surprisingly) it was adapted from the English custard tart, which has now evolved to become one of the must-eat treats in Hong Kong.

Tai Cheong Bakery’s egg tart was described as ‘The Best’ by Chris Patten, the last British Governor of Hong Kong. The custard filling is light and creamy, together with the crumbly shortcrust pastry made this the best selling daan tart in Hong Kong.

泰昌餅家 Tai Chong Bakery, 35 Lyndhurst Terrace, Central

Mango drinks and desserts
Hui Lau Shan is a dessert franchise specialising in mango desserts. It is nothing spectacular, but you cannot beat a glass of fresh mango drink layered with mango jelly, mango puree, chunks of fresh mango and then topped with coconut milk when you are tired and thirsty, especially after shopping :) They also do a wide range of fresh fruit drinks and desserts, such as mango mochi which is equally satisfying.

許留山 Hui Lau Shan, 2 Yee Wo Street, Causeway Bay

Siu Mei (Roast meat)
Siu Mei is a classic Cantonese cuisine in its own right, which involves a great deal of preparation. Each restaurant has its own secret recipe for preparing the meat. The common meats - chicken, goose, duck and pork -  are roasted in an open wood fire, and then hung to enhance the flavour. They are normally served on the bone, with a dedicated sauce for each. You can order them as an individual dish, or on top of rice/noodles for a quick meal.

Kam Gei is a local siu mei restaurant in my home town Yuen Long. We always order roast whole suckling pig from there, when there is a big traditional celebration in our local village. I highly recommend their ‘half fat half lean’ char siu, which melts in your mouth in no time!

金記 Kam Gei, 66 Shui Che Kwun Street, Yuen Long

Chea Jai Min (Trolley noodles)
As you might have guessed from the name, trolley noodles used to served by hawkers on the street, but since the hygiene standards came into force in recent years, most of the hawkers have vanished - although some have started their own trolley noodle style cafes in permanent venues. The basic idea is to choose your own type of noodle and toppings. A typical cafe would serve around five different type of noodle, and at least twenty toppings, including the exotic ones like lo sui pig’s intestine, deep fried pig’s skin, and cubes of solidified pig’s blood.

My favourite trolley noodles come from a very basic noodle cafe near my old secondary school. I remember the queue was long back then, but now the average queuing time can be over thirty minutes! Their success is due to three killer ingredients: the first is the braised Chinese radish, slow cooked in a light and sweet soy sauce based broth. Second is the lo sui pig’s intestine, so bouncy and rich that I have to order double portions every time I visit. The last one is the aromatic spicy sauce - it is a bit like satay sauce but a lot thicker. It is a highly spiced sauce, I could not tell what is in it apart from Chinese five spice... you just need a little to blow your head off!

永年士多 Wing Nin, 6 Fung Lok Lane, Yuen Long

This is just a small collection of my favourite snacks in Hong Kong, I tried to fit in as much as I could, but it was impossible to cover it all in two trips. Stay tuned for upcoming posts featuring more Chinese, as well as Sichuan and Japanese restaurants in Hong Kong!