Frog and Melon Pan

I must explain something about myself here. I am an obsessive baker. Obsessive as in: I do not stop till I succeed in baking whatever I'm baking. Sometimes that means I make an recipe over and over again for weeks, till I get it right. Often it also means I harass my husband into driving me to the supermarket 10 minutes before closing time to buy eggs or other ingredients.

Another note: I am not a professional baker. I have never worked in a bakery or had any kind of training. I do not even own a real oven. Everything I bake is done in a microwave with oven function. I also do not own a real food processor. My point here: You do not need anything professional to make tasty bread/cookies/cakes. Although you might need a lot of patience to compensate for lacking professional tools. Talking about tools: I do not have a good photo camera. I use my mobile phone to take the pictures and I don't do pretty photo shoot pictures like the other food blogs... Wish I could though.

So... Nothing professional here. Now on a more personal note: I am a 25 year old film and literature student.  I like/obsess about/love:

• Japanese food - cause Japanese stuff is always interesting or plain weird 
• Chinese food - cause I grew up with it and ever since I moved out of my parent's place I've been trying to recreate my mom's cooking
• Frogs - The green ones with orange toes and IKEA's frog. I love that frog. So green and fluffy
• Cakes - Especially complex cakes
• Stews - Nothing is better than a hot bowl of stew in the winter

And now to the food!

Today's (and yesterday's) baking project: Melon Pan. Yesterday my friend came over and we tried making melon pan... Well, she watched ancient movies and I tried to make melon pan. Yesterday was not a good day for baking. We started off with making castella cake and then made melon pan. Castella cake collapsed too much and the melon pan turned into flat bread with cookie topping.

I recently fell in love with a website: Joe Pastry. Great website with loads of information and recipes. I was looking for a recipe for Danish Pastry when I found the site and then saw his recipe for melon pan. I just had to try it! So when my Japan crazy friend came over I made, or tried to make two Japanese baking recipes. Castella cake is something I'll definitely post about later. 

Melon pan is a Japanese bun with a crisp cookie topping. Its supposed to be not too sweet, soft on the inside and crisp on the outside. Apparently there is no melon in the recipe at all, its called melon pan because it looks like a melon... In Chinese baking there is a similar bun called pineapple bun. I grew up staring at them whenever my parents went to the Chinese bakery, but refused to eat them till a few years ago. The Chinese version has a slightly different topping. I suspect the use of baking soda... but essentially its the same bun. Soft bread topped with crisp sweet cookie dough. 

Yesterday the melon pan turned out too flat, but I was determined to get it right. So I made the cookie part yesterday evening, put it in the fridge and made the bread part this morning. Today they turned out fine:

The bread part is from the Joe Pastry website which you have find here. I didn't use his cookie recipe, cause I tried a bit of it yesterday and found it not sweet enough. So I used the cookie recipe from Cooking with Dog. I doubled the cookie recipe, cause the bread recipe is for 12 pieces and the cookie recipe for 5 pieces.

Here's what I did:

Cookie Dough Recipe

50 grams of butter, on room temperature (make sure its soft)

70 grams of sugar, white granulated

50 grams of egg, should be about one large egg in US or one medium egg in Europe on room temperature

160 grams of cake flour

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

Plastic wrap

1. Whisk the butter with the sugar till it is well mixed or as Cooking with Dog says: till it turns white

2. Mix in the egg in small amounts. Don't cheat! If you egg the egg all at once the butter and egg won't mix well. Having the egg on room temperature will make mixing easier, also the sugar will dissolve better.

3. In another bowl mix the cake flour with the baking powder.

4. Add the half of the flour mix to the butter mix and mix it with a spatula or spoon. 

5. Add the rest of the flour mix and keep mixing it till it just sticks together. Overmixing the dough will make it too sticky to work with. 

6. Wrap the cookie dough in some plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator for about an hour.

7. Take out the cookie dough and weigh it. Divide the total weight by 12.

8. Cut the cookie dough and weigh each piece so they will be all the same size.

9. Roll a piece into a ball and flatten it between two pieces of plastic wrap or sandwich bags. I use sandwich bags, cause plastic wrap can be annoying as it tends to fold onto itself and stick together.

10. Flatten the ball of dough into a round till its about 2 or 3 mm thick.

11. Peel away the top layer of plastic and put it on a plate or in some tupperware. 

12. Repeat with the other balls, stacking the cookie dough on each other with plastic between them and covering the last one with plastic. Put the cookie dough in the fridge again for an hour.

Bread Dough Recipe

298 grams of flour, bread flour or all-purpose flour

40 grams of milk powder, I used coffee creamer

4 grams of dry yeast

35 grams of sugar, white granulated

3/4 teaspoon salt

170 ml warm water

28 grams of butter

1. Mix together the flour, milk powder, yeast, sugar and salt. 

2. Add the water and knead it till you have a smooth dough.

3. Knead the butter into the dough. Keep kneading till the dough is smooth again.

4. Put the dough into a container and cover it with plastic wrap. The container needs to be at the least double the size as the dough, preferably bigger.

5. Let the dough rise at room temperature for an hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

6. Punch down your dough, removing all the air bubbles. 

7. Weigh the dough and divide the total weigh by 12. 

8. Cut the dough and cut it into 12 equal pieces.

9. Make little balls of dough. I get the top smooth by pushing the sides into the bottom with my thumb, stretching the top.

10. Let the balls rest for 15 minutes under a slightly wet towel. 

Now for the assembly part:

White granulated sugar in a deep plate or bowl

1. Take a flattened cookie dough, place one of the bread balls in the middle of it. 

2. Fold the cookie dough over the bread dough. Try to achieve a smooth top. There will be excess cookie dough which you'll need to fold together at the bottom/sides of the bun. Try to spread the folds, making about 5 small folds instead of 3 big ones.

3. Grab a knife and make a diamond pattern or any other pattern on the cookie dough.

4. Roll the cookie dough top in the sugar.

5. Repeat with the other buns. 

6. Let the buns sit for 45 minutes.

7. Heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius or 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

8. The buns will have flattened out a little. Use your fingers to push the sides in a bit to make them less flat.

9. Bake the buns for about 20-25 minutes till the top and bottom are slightly browned. 

10. Put the baked buns on a wire rack and let them cool.