The ideal choice for those who adore chocolate and cannot have gluten! Deceptively simple to create and great for entertaining. I use cocoa powder to flour the pan so it won’t leave white marks on the cake and keeping it completely gluten-free. Serve warm with a scoop of ice cream and garnished with powdered sugar or whipped cream, as desired. Footnotes contain a chocolate ganache coating.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 35 mins |
| Additional Time: | 1 hr 45 mins |
| Total Time: | 2 hrs 50 mins |
| Servings: | 24 |
| Yield: | 24 buns |
Ingredients
- 1 cup milk
- 2 large eggs
- ½ cup vegetable oil
- ¼ cup water
- 4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 tablespoon active dry yeast
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 pound ground pork
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 3 tablespoons white sugar
- 2 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
- 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 star anise
- 1 cup water
Instructions
- Make dough: Heat milk in a microwave-safe container in the microwave until lukewarm but not scalding, 15 to 30 seconds. Pour lukewarm milk into a large bowl. Add eggs, oil, and water; mix well.
- Mix together flour, yeast, and salt in a medium bowl. Stir into milk mixture until fully incorporated. Cover the bowl and let rest for 15 minutes.
- Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead until smooth and elastic, adding flour as needed if too sticky, about 5 minutes. Shape dough into a smooth ball by tucking folded ends under. Place into a clean bowl, cover, and let rise in a warm area until doubled in size, 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
- Meanwhile, prepare filling: Place pork in a bowl with soy sauce, sugar, oyster sauce, cornstarch, and pepper. Mix well to combine.
- Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook and stir onion, garlic, and star anise in hot oil for 2 minutes. Add ground pork mixture; cook and stir until browned and crumbly, 4 to 5 minutes. Pour in water; reduce heat and let simmer, scraping the bottom of the pan occasionally until mixture is glazed but not soupy, about 10 minutes. Transfer filling to a bowl and refrigerate until dough is ready.
- Preheat the oven to 100 degrees F (37 degrees C). Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Portion dough into golf ball-sized pieces, about 2-inches in diameter. Arrange on the prepared baking pan with 1 to 2 inches between them. Flatten dough balls using your hand to 1/4-inch thickness or slightly larger than the palm of your hand. Put 1 tablespoon filling in the dough centers. Gather edges of dough at the top; twist and pinch to seal. Place each bun back on the prepared baking sheet.
- Turn off the oven once it has reached temperature. Transfer buns on the baking sheet to the warm oven and let buns rest until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C), leaving buns inside. Bake buns until bottoms are lightly browned, 12 to 15 minutes.
- You can use a dough machine to make the dough. Start with the wet ingredients and use the Dough setting.
- I like taking a photo of the dough before rising to compare it with the risen dough.
- If the filling mixture is soupy after simmering, you can continue to simmer until the liquid has mostly evaporated or use a slotted spoon to strain the meat from the extra liquid.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 184 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 20 g |
| Cholesterol | 29 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 7 g |
| Saturated Fat | 2 g |
| Sodium | 187 mg |
| Sugars | 2 g |
| Fat | 9 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
These are delicious and the dough is so beautifully tender! I thought the dough could use a bit more salt, but the filling is absolutely amazingly full of flavor. I did skip the water and cornstarch, it was slightly “saucy” without either, and I just let the meat mixture simmer until most of the excess liquid was gone.
Hi, this is my recipe, and I just wanted to make these notes that Allrecipe changed: – use 1 whole star anise. Remove the star anise before using the filling. – start with 1/8 cup soy sauce as some brands can be too salty. I use Kikkoman. Taste the filling before using it and adjust salt level to your taste. Step 1 – Heat 1 cup cold milk for 1 minute. The cold eggs, oil and water will bring the liquid temperature down to lukewarm when they’re all mixed together. Step 6 – Preheat oven to 100F – this is purely for the last rise. 200F will kill your dough. If you don’t have parchment paper, you can grease the baking sheet with vegetable oil. Step 8 – Turn off the oven once it reaches 100F. The oven should feel like a warm summer day. Step 10 – I use my oven’s convection setting for more even browning.