Fluffy Rice Cupcakes (发粄)

Introducing the Hakka 'Ban' Culture

Above are "Bot ban/发粄" from Meizhou - a city in Guangdong that’s basically Hakka central. "Bot" in 'bot ban' means puffed up and the ban means 'rice product'. While this bot ban might be one of my personal favorite "ban", Hakka cuisine has all kinds of "ban" items – and it's its own culture in and of itself.

There’re several theories about the origin of Hakka people, and we definitely don't want to get too much into the weeds on this front. Anyway, today it's widely believed that Hakka people migrated over time from the North of the country to the southeast. When it comes to their cuisine, that means that they crossed the China's fabled wheat-rice divide in the process.

As you might already know, wheat and wheat products like breads, noodles, dumplings have been a more prominent way of eating in the north of the country. So as the Hakka people migrated to the rice-dominated south, many of their traditional dishes had to be adapted to their new environment. For example, it's thought that many of their classic 'stuffed stuff' dishes are an adaptation of trying to make dumplings without wheat flour.

So as the practice continued, there ended up being more and more rice-based items. And the character "粄/ban", which is listed under the radical "rice" - became this unique Hakka term to describe the baos, dumplings, and cakes that're made with rice instead of wheat.

Fluffy Rice Cupcakes

• Jasmine rice (粘米/泰国香米), 300g. To be soaked.

• Jasmine rice (粘米/泰国香米), 100g. To be cooked.

• Ice water, 160g.

• Dark brown sugar, 140g. Note that we used pounded jaggery (i.e. slab sugar, 红糖) in the video, powdered would work just as well.

• Optional: red yeast rice (红曲), 2 tbsp.

• Osmotolerant yeast (高塘酵母), 2g.

Process:

The day before, rinse your rice. Soak 300g worth in the fridge, and cook the remaining 100g. You can cook the 100g of rice however you like, but what Steph did in the video (because the quantity was too small for the rice cooker), was boil in in three cups of water, uncovered, for eight minutes... then strain, return to the pot, and cover to steam until it returns to room temp. Toss the cooked rice in the fridge to dry overnight.

(Note that you can just also just use leftover rice for the cooked rice, obviously. If going that route, measure out 165g of leftover rice)

Following day, strain your soaked rice, and add to a blender together with the cooked rice, 160g of ice water, 140g of dark brown sugar, a 2 tbsp of red yeast rice.

(Note that you will likely need to work in batches here unless you own a particularly heavy duty blender. We would suggest mixing everything together, then blending it in three separate batches, and recombining.)

Mix in 2g of yeast. Let it sit until it doubles in size, ~3 hours.

After that time, bring your steamer to a boil and oil your cups/ramekins. Place your cups/ramekins in the steamer for ~2 minutes to heat up, to about 80C. As you're heating those up, stir the batter to break up the air bubbles, or until it's roughly the same original volume.

Pour the batter into your cups/ramekins. Steam for 40 minutes, though note that if your cups are smaller than ours (120mL), it might not need the full 40.

Remove from the steamer. Once they're cool to the touch, wiggle them out of the cups - you might need a paring knife to finish the job, as they will stick a bit. After removing, let them cool down for at least three hours, or ideally overnight.