Manjū

A thin steamed skin round bean paste, with the dough mixed soft and left barely handled.

Vegan.

Ingredients

• 200 g plain flour
• 80 g caster sugar
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 60 ml water
• 1 tablespoon mirin
• 360 g anko

Method

1. A THIN SKIN, NOT A BUN. The anko is three times the weight of the dough, and the finished thing is mostly filling with a wrapper barely 3 mm thick. The anpan on this site is the opposite -- a proper bread round a core -- and the two are not variations on each other.
2. NO YEAST AND NO PROVING. Baking powder only, and the dough is made and used within half an hour.
3. BARELY HANDLED. Mix with a spatula until it just comes together, then knead ten strokes at most. Worked like bread, the skin goes tough and chewy instead of tender.
4. Dissolve the sugar in the water and mirin first, cold. Sugar stirred into flour never distributes evenly in a dough this small.
5. Flour and baking powder in, folded to a soft sticky dough. It should stick slightly to the fingers.
6. Rest it 20 minutes covered -- that is enough to make it workable without developing it.
7. Roll the anko into 12 balls first and chill them.
8. Dust hands with flour. Flatten a piece of dough into a disc thinner at the edge, bean ball in, and push the dough UP around it with the other hand rather than wrapping it over. Pinch shut and roll smooth.
9. SEAM DOWN on a square of baking paper, well apart -- they swell and will fuse.
10. Steam 12 minutes over a rolling boil with a cloth under the lid. Do not lift the lid before 10 minutes or they sink. Eat warm or the same day.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Japan · All recipes