As promised, I present..

Custard Buns

This is something I’ve wanted to try making for a long time. Living in Brisbane I would routinely stop at the Asian bakery in Chinatown. I loved their custard buns. I’d guess it’s not a very traditional Asian dessert, but so simple, insanely cheap & my gods they were yummy (I can thank my brother Nathan for introducing me to them one day in my teens we were feeling particularly poor). I wonder if that place is still open these days…

Anyway, with the big yeast purchase this week I was trying to think of recipes to try, so I sought a sweet dough recipe online (actually used one from a cream cheese bread recipe that I’d like to make one day, but since I didn’t have cream cheese I thought I’d replace it with a custard filling). I then found a simple custard recipe that looked good & here we are making custard buns!

The mixture makes a good amount of dough so I split it in two & for some fun made one twisty loaf & 3 small buns.

For the dough-

• 2 1/4t instant yeast
• 1/4 C warm water
• 1/2 C warm milk
• 1T butter
• 1t salt
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 3 C Flour

For the filling-

• 4T flour
• 2/3 C sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 2 C milk
• 2 large eggs
• 1t vanilla
• 1T butter

I started the prep work last night:

First I did with the custard filling, cos I’ve never made custard.. & if I screwed that up I didn’t want to have already started the dough.

Mix all the ingredients except the vanilla & butter. Whisk until smooth.
Then put the mixture over a low heat & keep whisking. Now, you’re meant to do this in a bain marie but I don’t have suitable bowls & pots. I used a medium saucepan over a very low flame & it worked fine.

After ten mins or so it started to thicken up. Since I didn’t want the custard gooping out of the buns, it needed to be quite thick, so the whisking continued an extra few mins until it held a nice form. Once it’s thick you add the butter & vanilla.

Then I wrapped it up tight in a bowl to sleep overnight in the fridge, getting ready for its busy day ahead tomorrow in the oven.

Onto the bread dough-

The sugar, milk, water & yeast gets mixed in a pot & let to rest a while for the yeast to react.
Go brew some tea, have a bath or something…

Come back & mix in the remaining ingredients. Mix until it’s a wet, gooey dough.

Oil the base of a pot & tip your dough mixture in. Throw it around so the oil coats the dough-ball & cover it to rise overnight.

Goodnight! … . . . zzzz  -_-

The next morning I find the dough almost exploding out of the pot. It’s looking really good.

I punched it down, flipped it onto the floured counter & worked out the large bubbles. It was a bit too wet (like the onion cob (previous post)) so I had to add more flour, but unfortunately only had wholewheat. It messed with the texture.

(then I divided the dough to make various shapes)

I started with a big twisted loaf, rolled the dough out &, like a palm leaf, made diagonal slits along the sides.

Then the custard was plopped in the middle. I was a little scared of overfilling it but now know I could’ve put a lot more in.

Then the ends were simply folded up, followed by the diagonal strips, alternating each side until the dough was pretty much covering all the custard. It doesn’t matter if there is filling showing (in fact it would look pretty if there was a colourful filling like berries or something showing through the strips.)

Then it got an egg wash, some sprinkled sugar & it was ready for the oven.

Now to try some buns..

I screwed up the first one (so don’t look at the ugly one hiding in the corner of the group picture below) & then decided on this method-

Flatten out a small ball of dough, dollop the custard in & bunch up the sides like a parcel.

Twist the top to seal it. Couldn’t be easier, huh?

I left them twisty side up cos I though it looked kinda pretty, like a steamed bun, but if you want smooth buns *chuckles* just put them upside down on the baking tray so the twist becomes the bottom of the bun.

And that was it. They got an eggwash, a sprinkle of sugar & went in a 350F oven for ..hmmm ..maybe half an hour? 40mins? To be honest I lost track of time & just took them out when they looked nice & golden on top.

They came out looking really pretty.

And they tasted pretty good too. The custard was a little floury for my liking, so I’ve tweaked the quantities above to combat that. Apart from that they’re a pretty yummy, relatively low fat (well, compared to cookies & cake) & a very cheap munchie.

Next time I might add some apples..

Oh & I had some leftover custard so I threw blobs on some buttered & sugared bread slices & shoved them into my little star tins. They made nice little snacks while we waited for everything else in the oven. Aren’t they cute? How’s that for an easy munchie?