Purple Rose Mantou (Mantou 饅頭)

Everywhere is selling purple sweet potato recently and I better get hold of this before it is hard to find later on as I have some recipes which I have bookmarked earlier.

When I first saw Wendy of Table for 2....or more post this beautiful Rose Mantou, I was so impressed and amazed how beautiful it was.  And I also found out few fellow bloggers has also done this too.  I wanted to make it but just sad couldn't get hold of purple sweet potato until now I got the chance to make it.

Mantou is actually a Chinese steamed bun (plain) and usually you can eat it as it own or go as an accompaniments to savoury dishes (pork belly, bbq pork) or sweet fillings such as red beans, kaya custard. 

I got to know Mantou is when watching ancient chinese series where they usually have mantou to bring along with them when they go travelling etc...... or they stop by at road side for a tea and have a mantou as snack.  Am I right?

I am glad Wendy post this Purple Rose Mantou whereby I got to make it today.  The male members in my family wasn't really a rose mantou person........ so we the ladies have to eat it.

Purple Rose Mantou

Recipe from Wendy of Table for 2....or more

Ingredients
250gm steamed purple sweet potato
200gm water
500gm pau flour
1 tsp baking powder
100gm sugar
50gm shortening/Crisco
1/4 tsp salt
11gm instant yeast

1. Mash sweet potato, or blitz sweet potato with almost all the water to get a fine paste.  

 
2. With balance of water, mix with yeast.
 

3. Combine everything except shortening and mix to form a dough.
 

4. Put in shortening and knead until dough is smooth. Add slightly more flour is dough is way 

     too sticky to handle. If the dough is sticky but can retain its form, like not slacking down, 

     just continue to knead, the gluten just hasn’t form, there’s no need to add extra flour.

5. Cover and let dough proof until double, about 1 hour.
 

6. Punch down dough and knead for 1-2 minutes.
 

7. Divide dough into 15g each.  

    Flatten each ball and roll out flat. With fingers, press the sides of the circle to make them 

    flatter and to create ripples (uneveness) .

8. Arrange 6 pieces of flattened dough, half stacking on top of each other.

9. Start rolling from the first piece on the bottom.

10. With a chopstick, saw the roll, it will roll while you saw, creating a fatter center than the 

       sides. Eventually it will break into 2.

11. Place rose buds upright on a piece of paper.Let buns rise to double and steam on high 

      heat for 12 minutes.

 

  Please go over to Wendy's blog for a more clearer tutorial pictures.  Mine is ugly and sucks!!

          
         Before steaming.

 
               After steamed...........

    Actual Mantou is like this type of shape.........

   So tiring doing this alone by myself but the Rose indeed has cheered me up....... :-)