Meia Makes...Steamed Buns.

One of the things I decided I wanted to do this year was to make a dessert recipe from the beautiful book A World of Cake by Krystina Castella once a month until December. The recipe for Peach Buns looked really fun and different and delicious...and easy!

One of the problems I'd had with any kind of intricate recipe in the past is that I tend to get overwhelmed, forget to eat, and by the time it's over, all the creativity has been leached out of me and I become a quivering crashing mound of goo that has become so jaded that even if the recipe is a success, it no longer looks or tastes good to me. So for the cake recipes this year, I plan to do a little each day, hopefully giving me time to recover between bouts of creativity and keeping myself fresh and upbeat in the process.

Back to the peach buns, which are not actually peach flavored; they just have the adorable appearance of peaches. This is what they're supposed to look like:

Aren't they cute? They are supposed to be stuffed with either lotus seed paste, sweet bean paste, or chocolate pudding. I couldn't find lotus seed paste at Uwajimaya (even though I vividly dreamed I did), but I did find a can of mashed sweet bean, which I ran through the food processor to improve its texture.

They ended up...decidedly very different than the original:

Hmmm. Maybe this would have been better for Halloween?

Oh well. Taste test!

Just close your eyes.

The bean paste is good, but the dough tastes...fermented? Maybe you're not supposed to let yeasty dough sit out overnight? XD

Well, it was fun to make, but I think I'll stick to the kind you buy already made at Uwajimaya in the future. They're not bad, just a little weird. I'm sure someone who knows what they're doing would have made them much better than I did! At least I had fun making them, and I'm really looking forward to some of the cake recipes later...that have frosting!