Dim Sum Custard Buns (奶黄包/流沙包)
Two ways - gooey, and custardy
Today I wanted to show you how to make a classic Baozi from Dim Sum, custard buns.
So there’s two related but distinct Baozi that’re often translated into English as ‘Custard Bun’: first, a classic Baozi filled with a Cantonese style custard called “Nai Huang Bao”; and second, a more modern sort that’s packed with a gooey filling that uses salted egg yolks as a base called “Liu Sha Bao”.
At times that second sort might be translated “Salted Egg Yolk Custard Bun”, but generally speaking Dim Sum restaurants’ll tend to carry one or the other. The former kind is more traditional, but the latter sort is becoming increasingly common in China nowadays. So I figured that it might be nice to teach you both types of filling: gooey and custardy. While I personally like mine custardy they’re both pretty great, so ultimately it’s up to you which direction you go. The gooey filling’ll be both easier and more visually impressive.
The way I’ll organize this is to first go over the custard-y filling, then the gooey filling, and finally how to make the Baozi wrappers/steam these.
Ingredients, Custard-y filling:
So what you’ll find with Cantonese custard is a lot of the same ideas as Western custard, but translated for use in Guangdong. Perhaps most obviously, the custard that you get here is going to be way thicker than what you might be used to – this’s going to end up almost a paste.
Some of the ingredients are different too – likely harkening back to a time when it was much tougher to source cream/milk in Guangdong than it is now. It makes use of condensed milk, butter, and instant custard… and in a very Cantonese way opts to steam the custard over low heat instead of simmering.
Makes filling for ~24 Baozi.
Eggs, 2; ~100g. That’s whole eggs, not just yolks. Another difference between this and Western custard.
Unsalted butter, 75g. Melted then returned to room temperature.
Condensed milk (炼奶), 120g. Some older recipes are based off of evaporated milk, but we liked the sort that use condensed milk. Sometimes you’ll see a bit of coconut milk in the mix too.
Instant custard (吉士粉), 1 tsp; -or- ½ tsp custard powder and ½ tsp milk powder. So AFAIK ‘custard powder in the West’s basically a mix of cornstarch and food coloring? What’s generally available here is actually ‘instant custard’. This’s a pretty unscientific substitution recommendation, but we want a bit of color from the custard powder, but also some of the milk powder it contains. So let’s go half/half of each?
Sugar, 1 tbsp.
Salt, ¼ tsp.
Cornstarch (生粉), 50g.
Process, Custardy Filling:
Thoroughly whisk the eggs. Really beat the snot out of them… keep going until you see no stray strands of egg white remaining.
Add the remaining ingredients one by one, whisking them together. Then strain into a bowl. Straining the mixture is to ensure that there aren’t any lumps.
Toss the bowl on a steamer and steam over medium high heat for five minutes. After five minutes, mix/stir the filling well, ~20 seconds. The initial medium high flame is to let the filling set.
Swap the flame to the lowest heat your stove’ll go, and steam for 55 more minutes, stirring in the same way every five minutes. In testing there we times we did it every ~10 minutes. We just found it to be a bit safer to opt for a shorter time, as while this’s more forgiving regarding small lumps than Western custard… you obviously still don’t want the thing to break on you.
Transfer to a container, let it come down to room temperature then toss in the fridge for at least ~3 hours or the freezer for ~1 hour. You final consistency should be gloopy/pasty – very different from a Western custard – something like this. You can also toss in the fridge overnight if that’s more convenient for you.
Ingredients, Gooey Filling:
So what makes this filling so impressively gooey? [Insert Drumroll Here] … gelatin. We’ll be adding a touch of cornstarch in there too, but way less than the previous version – gelatin’ll do the heavy lifting.
Makes enough filling for 24 Baozi.
Salted Egg Yolks (咸蛋黄), 4. For the unaware, salted egg yolks are pretty much what they say on the tin – the yolks from salt-cured eggs. Duck eggs usually, as the yolks are fattier. You should be able to get them at an Asian supermarket, but barring that you can also just make some yourself… all you need’s eggs, salt, and about a month. They’ve become real trendy to toss in desserts nowadays – perhaps a bit overly so (you know how food trends are) – but they’re super rich and go awesome with sweet stuff.
Cantonese Rose Wine (玫瑰露酒) -or- Mijiu Rice wine (米酒) -or- Sake, ~1/2 tbsp. To steam together with the salted eggs. Helps remove/balance the subtle ‘off’ taste from the curing process. Cantonese rose wine is preferred but don’t bother buying a bottle just for this… you can also use Mijiu (i.e. Chinese clear) rice wine or Japanese sake (which’s a lower ABV relative of Chinese Mijiu).
Water, 130g mixed with Gelatin, 5g.
Coconut milk (椰奶), 40g. Another cool addition to this variety of filling, though sometimes you’ll see this in the previous sort too.
Condensed milk (炼奶), 35g
Sugar, 40g.
Milk powder (奶粉), 10g.
Instant custard (吉士粉), 5g. Or in the same way, swap for half custard powder and half milk powder.
Cornstarch (生粉), 5g.
Unsalted butter, 40g. Not melted this time.
Process, Gooey Filling.
Mix the salted egg yolk with the wine, then in a bowl steam on high for ~10 minutes. The color of the salted egg yolk will obviously change.
With a bench scraper (or whatever), mash the steamed salted egg yolk into a paste. Really go at this, you might need to work on it for 3-5 minutes. There might be some small harder pieces that you can’t quite mash… just take those out and eat them (they’ll taste good, for sure).
Bloom the gelatin – i.e. mix in the gelatin with the water. Whisking these together in advance helps deter clumping.
Mix together the coconut milk, the condensed milk, the cornstarch, the sugar, the milk powder, and the custard powder. Mix this real well together. Basically everything except your water/gelatin mix, the salted egg yolk paste, and the butter.
Cook the filling. Over medium flame, add the gelatin/water mix to a saucepan. After ~1 minute when the gelatin’s dissolved, add the butter. Stir and let the butter melt into the liquid, ~1 minute. Slowly pour in the mixture from step #4, stirring constantly. Continue to stir for ~2-3 minutes, until thickened.
Take the filling off the flame, mix in the salted egg yolk paste. Let come down to room temp, then toss in the fridge for at least ~3 hours or ~1 hour in the freezer. Or toss in the fridge overnight if that’s more convenient.
Ingredients, Baozi Wrappers:
Ok, so the type of wrappers here belong to the category of Famian Baozi (发面包子), or Leavened Baozi. However, these are the kind of Baozi wrapper that’re used for sweet fillings in particular… the most obvious differences between these and your ‘bog standard savory Baozi’ is that (1) these ones have this smooth skin that’s kinda tough to achieve (annoying) but (2) are steamed pleat side down (people with fat clumsy fingers like me rejoice!).
Now there’s two kinds of sweet Baozi wrappers: those that use water as the base of the dough, and also enriched doughs. The former is more common for cost reasons, but after a good bit of testing… we had much better luck with the latter. So we’ll be using milk and also including lard in the mix, which I know is a slight deviation philosophically from the Cantonese custard… but really works well (and many of the very best Dim Sum places in Guangdong use enriched doughs here).
(If you’re curious, the other dough’s 55% hydration then by weight is 4-10% sugar, 2% baking powder, 1% yeast).
Makes wrappers for 12 Baozi.
AP Flour (中筋面粉), 220g. Our AP flour’s ~11% protein, just for reference.
Baking powder (泡打粉), 5g. The another difference between this and savory Baozi doughs, which generally just use yeast.
Yeast (酵母), 2g.
Sugar, 10g.
Milk (鲜奶), 140g.
Lard (猪油), 9g -or- vegetable shortening. I know that lard can be weirdly annoying to find in the West… we always make our own and have a big batch (always recommended) but feel free to use shortening if you need.
Process, Baozi Wrappers and Final Baozi:
So those smooth wrappers, the bit I said was kind of annoying to achieve? Those are accomplishment by repeatedly rolling the dough out thin to remove any air bubbles. With that kind of step, we like using a pasta maker. Is it traditional? Nope. Does it accomplish the same exact thing with way less effort? Totally.
So if you don’t have a pasta maker don’t fret, you can still use a rolling pin in step #4. Your life’ll just be a bit more difficult.
Sift together the flour, the baking powder, and the yeast into a mixing bowl. Sifting these helps remove clumps, but also mixes everything together.
Add the sugar to the milk, then slowly pour it into the dry ingredients, mixing constantly. You should be looking at a shaggy dough that’s about this consistency… with all the dry flour basically incorporated.
Knead for 6 minutes, add in the lard, then knead for another two. Or alternatively, the same amount of time in a stand mixer with the dough hook attachment on speed 1.
Pass the dough through a pasta maker on the widest setting, fold it like a letter, then pass it through again. Just your sheet in half, and with each half, continue to fold/send it through the pasta maker 5 times total. If doubling the wrapper quantity, cut the sheet into four pieces. You can also do this with a rolling pin – just fold, and roll each bit out as thin as you can.
Lay the sheet out, then from the back tightly roll up the sheet like a log. Push in the ends, roll it a touch so it’s even… then toss in a bowl. Let rest for 15 minutes. You should be looking at something that looks basically like this by the end.
Portion out the filling, toss in the freezer for ~10 minutes. Take out your filling and weight them out to be ~15g gram pieces. Roll them a touch into balls (note that the gooey filling won’t be overly ‘rollable’), and toss back to the freezer for them to firm up a touch.
Portion out the dough for the wrappers. Twelve buns, 30g each. Roll them into balls.
Make the Baozi wrapper. So this is a little tough to describe, but the way that you roll Baozi wrappers (and dumpling wrappers for that matter) is to first press down, then with the edge of the rolling pin to gently roll in, then roll back out with force. Twist slightly (~15 degrees) and repeat. This makes the center of the Baozi thicker than the edges… allowing it to better hold the filling, while also making it easier to pleat. If you’ve seen some amateur Baozi online whose pleating makes it look like they’ve got elephantiasis… this is the step that’s being done incorrectly.
Stuff and form the Baozi. Another thing that’s a little difficult to describe with the written word. Take your ball of filling, then gently press down into the center of the bun. Pinch one side of the Baozi, then pleat around while gently pressing the filling down inside. Once you get to the edge, close it up, twist the end back to the beginning/top of the bun… and pinch it closed (thoroughly). Then take the Baozi and pleat side down roll it a bit on your work surface to make the whole thing a bit more even.
Place the Baozi on ~1.5 inch squares of parchment paper, then toss on a steamer. Parchment paper’s so that it doesn’t get stuck.
Proof the Baozi over 28 centigrade water for 15 minutes. The 28C water is just for standardization purposes. You have a bit of flexibility.
Move the steamer over boiling water, and steam over a medium/medium high flame for 8 minutes. Then, shut off the heat and wait at least 3 minutes. Medium flame on a Chinese range/medium high on Western. Shutting off the heat and waiting is so that the temperature doesn’t change too drastically, and the bun can better keep its shape.
Note on Portions:
Yeah, this’s where the fact that we’re not professionals at this game sometimes gets obvious. Filling for 24 Baozi, wrappers for 12. Allow me to explain.
We probably should’ve just doubled the dough but we… didn’t want to eat that much in testing and there’s only so many custard buns we can give to our neighbors before it gets weird. I also didn’t want to double the amount in the narration for the accompanying video (while still having the visual of the dough we had for twelve), because I think it’s important for those things to match up.
So… either double the dough, or take the remaining half of your custard and freeze it. If you’re going with the gooey filling, you could halve it… but with the classic steamed custard scaling down might be a bit problematic (steamed stuff can sometimes cook a bit fast if you have a small amount)… so if you’re trying to scale down the custardy filling, we’d recommend a double boiler set-up.