Dessert Dumpling Recipes Archives

Egg Custard Buns Recipe (Lai Wong Bao)

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Don’t be put off by the name of this sweet bao. Egg custard buns are not a body sculpting issue that you need to work off, well…unless you eat too many of them! I made a batch today to help a young woman satisfy her boyfriend’s love for these steam filled buns. Who would think that leavened steam bao could help lovers?

As with the chicken and shiitake mushroom bun filling, this one was developed to be used with the basic yeast dough in Asian Dumplings. Add it to your repertoire for an unusually fun sweet dumpling treat!

The recipe for the egg custard bun filling is on Viet World Kitchen.

Mochi Covered Dark Chocolate Truffles a la Betelnut

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If you love dumplings and chocolate, this recipe is for you. Chefs Alexander Ong and Michael Siegel of Betelnut restaurant invited me for a lesson on how to make Siegel’s tasty creation, a mochi (sticky rice) wrapped dumpling that contains a filling of chocolate ganache. When I arrived at the San Francisco restaurant, Siegel was ready with all of his mis en place. We joked as he whisked, steamed, cut, and wrapped the dumplings. Siegel made it look so easy that for the first time, I felt like I could master Japanese wagashi-style confections and teach others too as well.

I had invited my dear friend Carolyn Jung of Foodgal.com to join us that afternoon, but I hadn’t fully explained what Siegel’s mochi dumpling was about. Carolyn had to squeeze our get together into her schedule, and when she arrived at Betelnut and discovered that the dumplings contained chocolate, she nearly exploded with glee.

“You didn’t tell me that he put CHOCOLATE into them!” she said. Oh. I told her they were truffle dumplings but the dumpling part got more to me and I overlooked the chocolate attraction to her!

When Carolyn tasted Siegel’s trio of mochi dumplings, she could barely contain herself to share them with the rest of us. I turned away for a few moments and when I returned my gaze to the mochi plate, it was empty.

Mochi Master Michael Siegel

Dessert Dumpling Recipes, Dumpling Restaurants

If you’ve ever wandered through a Japanese market, chances are that you’ve noticed the dainty and lovely confections collectively known as wagashi. Diminutive, they can often take on gorgeous forms, such as the most perfect-looking peach painted with the subtle blush of summer. Bite into one and you may be surprised. The peach skin could be made of chewy sticky rice and the flesh may be made of sweetened bean paste. Several years ago, renowned Japanese food expert Elizabeth Andoh, author of Washoku among other titles, urged me to include wagashi recipes in Asian Dumplings but I demurred as the specific ingredients and precise techniques seemed way beyond mortals. Recently, however, Chef Michael Siegel of Betelnut restaurant in San Francisco convinced me otherwise.

Siegel and I met at the Culinary Institute of America’s World of Flavors conference last November 2009 in Napa. Alexander Ong, a partner and the executive chef of Betelnut introduced us, and Mike and I hit it off over a discussion of our mutual love for pastrami and bagels. Chef Siegel is Jewish-American and two years ago, his professional skills and innate curiosity brought him to Betelnut, a long-standing, acclaimed pan-Asian restaurant. He is Ong’s right-hand man in the kitchen, and Ong’s management style is to encourage his team to experiment all the while staying true to traditions. (If you go, reserve one of the three beggar’s chicken cooked in lotus leaf and clay that are cooked each night!)

After that initial meeting, I lunched at Betelnut and for dessert, Ong sent out the above plate of three spheres. The waiter presented it as the “mochi trio” – and indeed, they had the unmistakable opaque white appearance of sticky (glutinous) rice. My eyebrows rose with interest. Inside, each mochi dumpling contained a different type of chocolate ganache: white, milk, and dark. The little garnishes of marmalade, salted caramel sauce, and a Kahlua and espresso cream offered flavor counterpoints to the rich filling and slightly sweet wrapper. When I asked Ong for the low-down on the mochi dumplings, he proudly said they were Siegel’s creation. I promptly asked if Siegel would share his story and technique. We scheduled a demo a few weeks later.

Portuguese Egg Tart Recipe (Poh Taht, Pasteis de Belem)

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Ask and you shall receive. Thank you to everyone who contributed insights on my question about Portuguese-Chinese egg tarts. They are a Portuguese treat called pasteis de Belem (a.k.a., pastel de nata) that were brought to Macau and adopted quite heartily by the Chinese. The Chinese, particular those in nearby Hong Kong created a riff by making their own Hong Kong-style egg tarts in the 1940s. The resulting Cantonese dahn taht has become ubiquitous with Chinese bakeries and dim sum houses.

Many of you submitted Portuguese egg tarts tips, such as where I can get them in the Bay Area, such as the bakery in Milpitas Square off the 880 freeway, in the 99 Ranch Market shopping center. Amy Sherman of CookingwithAmy.com gave a link to her post on the famous Portuguese egg tarts from the Antiga Confeitaria de Belém pastry shop in Lisbon, Portugal. That bakery was the one that commercialized the tarts in 1837. Before then, Portuguese egg tarts were made and sold by the Catholic nuns of the Jerónimos Monastery. (Praise the sisters!) Others pointed to the Macao institution that’s renowned for their Portuguese egg tarts – Lord Stow’s bakery. Stowe’s cross between the English and Portuguese versions is the benchmark for Portuguese egg tarts in Asia. Egg tart fever hit Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan in the late 1990s.

I looked up Stow’s and found this YouTube video which was incredibly enlightening. Watch it and in the first minute, catch how the pastry is rolled up into a cylinder and then pressed into the tart shell! For those of you who have the Asian Dumplings cookbook – that cylindrical treatment of dough is the same as what’s used for Chinese flaky pastry on page 120 to make things like Malaysian curry puffs. I now wonder if the Chinese got that from the Portuguese? I’ve not seen that technique applied to puff pastry in other cuisines.

By using a cylinder of rolled up puff pastry-type dough (some describe it as a Swiss roll) for the pastry, the tart shell naturally pushes upwards as it bakes in the oven. All that hot air forces the custard to puff up like a mushroom cap and when things deflate after baking, you get the characteristic undulating top. I know this because I went about five rounds with baking the tarts to develop my own Portuguese egg tart recipe.

Shanghai Dumpling King’s Sugar Egg Puffs Recipe (Bai Tang Sha Weng)

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These deep-fried puffed dumplings are one of the best things I’ve eaten in a long time. I tasted them on Saturday at Shanghai Dumpling King (3319 Balboa Street, between 34th and 35th) in the Outer Richmond in San Francisco. My friend Linda and I went there for the Shanghai soup dumplings, which were stellar, but we came away with this ‘new’ discovery. Sugar egg puffs are an ethereal cross between a cream puff and doughnut. They are deep fried wonders and not greasy whatsoever.

The young waitress paraded the fried sugar egg puffs (misspelled on the menu as “suger egg puff” in the dessert section) around the small restaurant on a tray and we were instantly taken in. We didn’t want them with the savories, but as soon as we finished all the dumplings, Linda asked the waitress, “Can we get those things fresh and hot?” The waitress obliged and Linda nearly burnt her tongue as she bit into the crisp, steamy hot puff.