Or “Ananas bread”, as Anna called them. Even though I said that it’s called pineapple in English. *checks* Hmm, seems that ananas somewhat correct too, although less used in English.
For those of you unknown to this Chinese specialty, pineapple bun or bo lo bao is a popular sweet pastry in Hong Kong. It doesn’t have any pineapple in it, rather, the pattern on the top of the bread looks a bit like the fruit, hence the name. Ah well, then surely it means that things like turtle jelly (gwai ling go) and bird’s nest soup doesn’t actually contain any turtle or bird nests? Unfortunately, the last two really do, unless you’re being scammed. Turtle jelly has turtle shell in it, and bird’s nest soup has bird spit in it, although hopefully not any other parts of the nest. But pineapple bun doesn’t actually have any pineapple in it. That’s Chinese cuisine for you.
Anyway, the reipe I got for the pineapple bun was one of the weirder bread recipes I’ve ever followed. The dough doesn’t really start out looking like a dough at all, and the amount of liquid in the recipe made the dough rather large. Even though I didn’t get it to rise very well, I still ended up with almost three large boxes of buns. Also I think it turned out too sweet… You don’t really notice it while eating it, but after the second one you’ll start feeling a bit sick. Eh, try lowering the sugar amount. Anyhow, I’ll post the recipe as it was given to me, translated to English though:
Anna super-mega ananas bread recipe!!!
The cookie dough
- 5 dl flour
- 2 egg yolks
- 220g margarine
- 1 teasp baking poweder
- 2 tablesp vanilla sugar
- 3 dl sugar
Mix everything and put it in the fridge for 30 minutes
The bread
- 200g melted margarine
- 1 pack quark cheese (about 250g?)
- 2 eggs
- 50g yeast
- 5 dl milk
- 3 dl sugar
- lots of flour
Instructions
- Melt butter and add milk. Dissolve the yeast in the mixture and add eggs, sugar and quark cheese. Mix untill everything is dissolved.
- Add flour untill the mixture forms a dough. Let the dough rise for 30 minutes.
- Make small balls of the dough and put it on a plate. Let them rise for another 30 minutes.
- Beat some eggs for “gluing” the cookie dough to the bread. Brush some egg on the bread, then take some cookie dough, shape it to a round ball and then flatten it and put it on the bread.
- Bake in middle of the oven at 235°C for 20 minutes.
As I mentioned, the recipe gives a rather huge dough, so you may want to halve the recipe if you just want to try it out. Also you may want to lessen the sugar amount, if you’re afraid it’ll turn out too sweet. However, I’m not sure if the reason it got to sweet was because it didn’t rise properly…
Other than the sweetness, and the fact that my buns feel heavy because they didn’t rise, they turned out quite okay! I still prefer the egg tarts though.