These nutty steamed buns are a perfect side for dinner. The buns are stuffed with sesame paste and sugar, then steamed until fluffy and light. They’re so comforting and great tasting that you don’t even need to serve other dishes to create a nice meal. Have you ever heard of Hua Juan (花卷)? Hua Juan literally means flower roll, and refers to a steamed bun that has a very simple filling. The filling can be sweet or savory. The idea of the bun is quite similar to that of the cinnamon roll, with only one further step required to shape the bun. After you cut the rolled-up dough to reveal a swirl pattern, you twist the dough to shape it like a flower. Steamed buns are daily staple in northern China. Some people prefer to serve them as a side for their meals instead of rice because they taste great by themselves. For a quick and easy dinner, my mom will serve these buns with a bowl of very simple congee or soup (millet porridge or hot and sour soup for example), with a vegetable dish. These sweet steamed buns use toasted sesame paste (a Chinese-style tahini) and sugar to make a sweet and nutty filling. The sesame paste (芝麻酱, zhi ma jiang) is quite similar to natural peanut butter, only nuttier and stronger in flavor. I have included peanut butter as an alternative in the recipe below, but I highly recommend you to give Chinese tahini a try. It is an ingredient with a truly Chinese flavor.
Thick sesame paste with sugar was one of my favorite snacks during my childhood. We didn’t have a lot of fancy desserts 20 years ago. There were only 2 flavors of popsicle to choose from. We could get cookies once in a while, but I don’t really have any memories of them before middle school. The truth is, dessert has never been a major part of traditional Chinese cuisine. The sesame paste with sugar one of the few sweets I had growing up. And it brings back happy memories of the good old days. We usually enjoy it in one of two ways. One is to spread it on a plain steamed yeast roll, just like you’d eat peanut butter on a piece of bread. The other way is to cook these nutty steamed buns with the paste as filling. My favorite thing to do during cooking was to use my finger to clean the bowl that contained the sugar-infused sesame paste, and eat the last few bits of it. It’s so good!
These steamed buns are really easy to make. As long as you knead the dough with enough strength and let the dough rest long enough, you will get very fluffy buns. The only tricky thing is shaping the bun. The big dilemma is: if you add too much filling, the buns will become a bit messy when you shape them, but the more filling you add, the tastier the buns will be. I guess I always stuff too much filling, myself. If you find the filling about to spill before you twist and shape the flower, you can simply steam the the buns without the final shaping. They will be equally delicious.
Do you like my recipes? Sign up for Omnivore’s Cookbook’s weekly newsletter to get the latest updates delivered to your inbox and a free e-cookbook! The nutrition facts are calculated based on 1 of the 12 buns generated by this recipe.
