Birthday Longevity Peach buns

                      These buns go well with my Chinese Red Eggs   just perfect for my dad's birthday :)

       Inspiration from:  china cookbook
       Ingredients
       Plain flour  400g
       Instant dry yeast  6g
       Lukewarm milk  200g


       Red yeast powder  1 teaspoon
       Matcha powder  1 teaspoon

       Filling:  Chestnut paste
     
      

      Method
      1.  Take 3 tablespoons of your lukewarm milk to mix with the yeast.  Whisk until yeast is well dissolved and turns frothy for use. Together with the remaining milk, pour into the flour. Stir and mix to bring everything together.  Quick knead to form a rough dough.  Cover and leave for 10 minutes. Gentle knead, fold and stretch for 10 seconds. Cover and leave for 10 minutes. Do twice more for the 10 minute interval. Cover and let it rise for an hour, or doubled it's size.

      2.  Punch down air. Take 200g dough, add in matcha powder and knead to form a green dough (for the leaves).  Weigh 35g each for the remaining white dough, roll them into balls. Roll dough out and wrap some filling in. Seal it, roll back to a ball, cover and set aside.

     3.  Now for the green dough, weigh 8g each and roll into balls. Next, roll out long (but not too long), score leaf prints.  Join one end, unscored side facing upward, brush a little water on top, place one piece of white dough in the centre of the two leaves and seal it up (see picture).

     4. On one side, in the middle of the bun, make dotted lines straight down to the bottom ( you may use a clean hair brush).  I used a tool to do the job.

     5. Cover and let them rest for 20 minutes.   Place buns in the steamer now, covered.   Turn on high heat to start boiling the water, when it's boiled, turn to medium low heat, continue to steam for 20 minutes.  Turn off heat after done. Remove buns only after 3 minutes.

     6.  When buns are ready, add a little water in the red yeast powder, sit the bun on clean parchment paper.   Using a brush, dip a little red yeast liquid and brush onto the sieve to create the Peach buns look.  Do that to the rest of the buns.

green dough
rolled into 8g each

white dough
rolled into 35g each

green dough...roll out long...score leaf prints
brush a little water, sit the white dough in the centre, seal it upward
(see picture below)

Hm....I must have disturbed the dough quite a bit with the zig-zag cuts...resulting wrinkling on the surface.
So...do watch out and do it gently instead.

red yeast liquid and brush for the decoration

I made zig-zag lines using this tool, only on one side of the bun
( you may use clean hairbrush to do it more gently)

this is how I do it, messy right?