I promised I would make something delicious, and here it is.
If you’re a fan of dim sum and Hong-Kong style bakeries, then you are no stranger to custard, which is something very different from what we imagine in the west.
Western custard is something like a creme brulee, pudding, or flan; moist, wobbly, gently crafted from eggs and milk. Eastern-style custard, as it applies to fillings anyway, is dry, almost grainy, but has a delicious eggy flavor. A bit sweet, a bit salty, wondefully rich, and unlike a french cream pastry, doesn’t spurt out cream all over the place when you bite into it.
This is my first attempt at such a custard, and I’m working with some new ingredients. Custard buns use as their filling base not chicken yolks, but salted duck egg yolks which I covered in my previous post. These yolks have the fantastic quality of being firm and pliable, the consistency of cold butter, and give the custard its rich and sweet-salty taste.
This recipe also uses custard powder, which can be found in asian grocery stores. Milk powder, AKA powdered milk, you should be able to find in any supermarket in the baking aisle.
I recommend using a stand mixer, if you’ve got one, for this – it will make your life a LOT easier. Also, a scale will help immensely. I’ve approximated the volume for those who don’t.
Here is the original recipe I’m working from. Since this was my first time making these, I stuck to the recipe as much as I could. But since I had leaf lard just lying around in my freezer, it substitutes the vegetable shortening.
Custard Buns
Adapted from Chinese Desserts by Lilian Cheng
The filling:
- 3 cooked salty egg yolks (to prepare, separate out the yolks and cook for 8 minutes at 350 in a greased pan)
- 4 tbsp custard powder
- 4 tbsp milk powder
- 4 tbsp powdered sugar
- 5 tbsp shortening (I used leaf lard)
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- 200g plain flour (about 1.5 cups)
- 50g granulated sugar (about a third of a cup)
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 2 tbsp milk
- 2 tsp shortnening (I used leaf lard)
- 80 ml water (about 1/3 cup)
- Force the salted egg yolks through a strainer to make sure any bits of cooked white are removed.
Forcing egg yolks through a sieve
- In a stand mixer, mix well with the other ingredients until it forms a smooth mass (it should look a bit like cookie dough)
- Cover a surface with cling wrap and pour out the custard filling, form into a log.
- Wrap and refrigerate until firm.
- Divide the log into 9 pieces, and knead into balls, then refrigerate until needed.
- Sift together the flour, baking powder and sugar.
- Fold in the shortening (or lard), milk and water.
- Knead until it forms a smooth dough.
- Cover with cloth and let sit for half an hour.
To put together the buns, knead the dough into a log, divide into 9 portions.
Divide the dough into parts.
Use a rolling pin to press each one.
Rolling the dough.
Place a ball of filling in the center of each, and wrap the dough around the filling. pinching to close.
Fold..
And fold.
Place seams down onto parchment paper.Steam for 15 minutes in a steamer (I have an electric one, but a bamboo steamer in a pot works fine, or one of those steamer baskets with a few levels to them).
Otherwise…SUCCESS!
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Salted Duck Eggs
by Jennifer Fisher on August 11, 2011
Hi everyone,
I know I promised you a post, but life has recently gotten in the way of that.
I was let go from my job two weeks ago, and my previously busy life has turned upside-down. You’d think that I would be eager to take my sudden glut of free time and start really devoting time to the project, but so far that has not been the case.
What they don’t tell you when you suddenly have a ton of free time are all the things you totally forgot about doing when you’re working all hours – things like cleaning the apartment and going to the gym and having your first summer in years where you actually go out in the sunshine.
Don’t forget the obligatory ‘I’m depressed I don’t have a job period.’ Which I think I’m over now.
Anyway, enough about me and my sorry unemployed ass – I think ‘m ready to come back to this project and really devote some time to it. I mean, its not like I have anything better to do at the moment.
I promised (like, two months ago, now) that the next thing I tackle would be something people actually want to eat. But it wouldn’t be EWPP without a strange ingredient, so first I present…
SALTED DUCK EGGS.
available at your local asian supermarket.
This is not what you think, or at least what initially came to mind for me: a hardboiled duck egg with salt on it. Not so much. Turns out that Salted Duck Eggs are eggs preserved by soaking duck eggs in brine, or packing them in salted charcoal.
This process causes the egg to have a sharp-tasting, liquid white, and a dark orange, firm, fatty yolk.
Pliable yolks without a water bath? BRILLIANT!
The yolk is what I’m after, in this case – it’s apparently that salty ‘something’ one finds in the custard filling of HK-style buns, and a whole yolk is often baked into mooncakes.
Many people are fascinated by eggs, and rightly so – its amazing to me that something like a soak in brine would cause such a dramatic change to the yolk and white. Although I didn’t pick up any 1000-year-old eggs, I hear that they are even more so: a white that has become completely solid and clear. Crazy.
I’ve never worked with Salted duck eggs before, but I am reading that they are often boiled and used as a supplement to congee (a chinese porridge).
It looks like the way to prepare the yolks for use are to oil a baking sheet and bake the yolks at 350 degrees, for eight minutes.
I’m having a lot of fun with the raw yolk, though: its solid and pliant, like play dough, which allows all sorts of fun things, like rolling it so thin it lets light pass.
A raw yolk, rolled thin.
Turns out that baking them (as people usually seem to do) makes it lose that beautiful color and translucent quality. If I had sousvide stuff, I would try that method. Maybe steaming would work as well.
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