Coconut bun recipe-I think it's Chinese

[Bernaise]

I have been secretly nourishing a tasty craving with these supremely soft long sweet buns baked with a buttery coconut centre.

I've seen some small round buns with a darker filling - not so good to me!

Problem here is: technically I don't know the proper name correct term for what I've had.

So sad the Korean grocer has decided not to drag them in from China town anymore

And I'm wondering if there is a recipe for this deliciousness.

Am I alone in this love of the coconut bun?

[forever_young_ca]

Although far from an expert, I think they are the same buns that I love so much. In Vancouver they are called "cocktail buns".

I don't know where you live, but if you are lucky enough to have several Chineses bakeries available, a good quest is to try each and every one of them in search of your favourite! Each bakery seems to make them slightly different!

[browniebaker]

I love these coconut buns, too. There does not seem to be just one name for them, hence the difficulty in searching for them. I happen upon them in Chinese bakeries here and there and never fail to buy a couple.

I remember one coconut bun that I loved and have not found again since. The bread was soft, sweet, white, and milky. The oval, coconut-dusted bun was split along the top. In the split was piped a rope of coconut filling like a buttercream frosting in texture.

Since I have not seen a recipe, if I were going to try baking them myself, I would use a sweet-roll dough (the one I use for all my sweet rolls is in Wei-Chuan's International Baking Delights) and experiment with different fillings until I got the taste and texture just right.

Good luck in your search. The search, in bakeries and in the kitchen, is more than half the fun of it all.

(edited to get the italics right!)

Edited September 23, 2005 by browniebaker (log)

[Bernaise]

Yay! you love them too! thanks for the tips...I guess I am going to have to head into the chinese bakeries of Toronto. But that bread recipe is so soft it must be loaded with butter or made with soft flour. Can you make bread with soft flour?

[browniebaker]

Ah, coconut-bun-love. You are not alone.

I think you need at least the gluten level of an all-purpose flour, since cake or pastry flour would not give you much rise for that pillowy texture, and bread flour, on the other end of the gluten-level spectrum, would make the bread too chewy. The supreme softness of the coconut bun comes, I think, from enrichment with lots of butter or other fat, milk, sugar, and maybe egg or egg yolk in the dough. Fat, milk, and sugar seem to play a big part in the softness of the buns at Chinese bakeries.

Oh, how lucky you are to be in or near a major center of Chinese bakeries such as Toronto! Try all the coconut buns! Yum.

[prasantrin]

I love coconut buns, as well. They're often called cocktail buns in English, and gai mei bau in...Cantonese? Last week in my breads class I made a recipe for milk tea buns. When I ate one, I remarked on the dough's similarity to cocktail buns, and thought I could try making cocktail buns with it (cocktail buns are also scarce in my part of the world!). I need to work on the filling, though. Just sugar, flour, coconut, and butter? Anyone have any idea about proportions?

Here are the ingredients for the dough:

230 g flour, divided into 2 parts

Into one part, add 1/2 tsp. salt

60g butter (don't mix in the butter, just have it ready with the flour/salt mixture). Set aside.

Into the other part of flour, add 1 1/2 tsp instant yeast

3 tbsp sugar

170 mL warm milk tea (just use straight milk for the cocktail buns)

Mix mix mix. Then add the other part of the flour with the butter. Use a wooden spoon to cut the butter into smaller pieces, then mix mix mix. When the dough forms a ball, turn out onto a work table. Knead for a long time. The dough is very wet and greasy. Knead until it becomes heavy. Form into a ball, put a bowl, let rise. When doubled in bulk, form into 9 round balls, cover and let rest for 10 minutes (as a guideline, we use a 40C proofing box, and put it in for about 30 minutes). At this point, you would form each roll around your filling, then place in your pan. Let rise (20 minutes at 40C), then bake.

This recipe makes 9 round buns, and uses a 9" (or maybe 8") square pan. Bakes at 200C 12-15 minutes in a convection gas oven, 210C 20-23 minutes in a convection electric oven. These temps are for Japanese ovens, so you may need to adjust baking times and/or temperatures for larger, American-sized ovens.

Note: You're not kneading in the way would knead an ordinary white bread dough. Because the dough is so sticky and greasy, you sort of stretch the dough onto the kneading surface to knead it, then use a scraper to bring it back into a ball, then repeat. Eventually you'll stop needing the scraper to bring the dough back into a ball. At that point, it's almost done. But it's not, so you'll need to spend a few more minutes kneading in this manner. You really have to make sure all the butter is worked into the dough as you're kneading it.