Steamed Bun 篜的做面包

Bought a Chinese recipe book "篜的做面包" (loosely translated as Steamed Bun) recently. The recipes are by a Japanese author and then translated/published in Taiwan. Was curious when I bought the book as I wonder how bread could be steamed, coz "面包" is supposedly bread.

After looking at the ingredients and baking the basic master recipe, I realised it is more of bun/cake than bread, maybe something like steamed sponge cake/bun?

Anyways, ingredients and steps are really very simple.

Ingredients
(5 buns - 7cm by 5cm muffin cup size)

• 1 egg
• 60g caster sugar
• 1/4 cup milk (I use low fat milk)
• 1 tbsp vegetable oil
• 100g cake flour
• 1 tsp baking powder

Steps

• Sift cake flour and baking powder together, set aside.
• Beat egg and caster sugar using hand whisk, until smooth and runny consistency.
• Add milk and mix well, then add vegetable oil.
• Fold the flour mixture into the wet ingredients thoroughly.
• Fill the muffin cups with batter, around 3/4 filled.
• Steam the bun for 10 to 15 mins. Bun is ready when toothpick inserted comes out clean. *Wrap the cover of the steamer/steaming pot with cotton cloth to prevent water vapour from dripping into the batter.

The steamed bun tastes simple, with subtle hint of egg, not too sweet. But texture not as soft and fluffy as I imagine. Probably I didn't mix/beat the batter well enough?

This is just the basic recipe, with variations of the sweet - orange, banana chocolate... and savoury like tomato and cheese, tuna and egg. I wonder how do those taste like? Well, got to try to find out. Till then.