Mooncakes and Milk Bread: Sweet & Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries: Sweet and Savory Recipes Inspired by Chinese Bakeries
£17.50£18.00 (-3%)
2022 JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • Baking and Desserts
2022 JAMES BEARD AWARD WINNER • Emerging Voice, Books
ONE OF THE TEN BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Time Out, Glamour, Taste of Home
Food blogger Kristina Cho (eatchofood.com) introduces you to Chinese bakery cooking with fresh, simple interpretations of classic recipes for the modern baker.
Inside, you’ll find sweet and savory baked buns, steamed buns, Chinese breads, unique cookies, whimsical cakes, juicy dumplings, Chinese breakfast dishes, and drinks. Recipes for steamed BBQ pork buns, pineapple buns with a thick slice of butter, silky smooth milk tea, and chocolate Swiss rolls all make an appearance–because a book about Chinese bakeries wouldn’t be complete without them
In Mooncakes & Milk Bread, Kristina teaches you to whip up these delicacies like a pro, including how to:
- Knead dough without a stand mixer
- Avoid collapsed steamed buns
- Infuse creams and custards with aromatic tea flavors
- Mix the most workable dumpling dough
- Pleat dumplings like an Asian grandma
This is the first book to exclusively focus on Chinese bakeries and cafés, but it isn’t just for those nostalgic for Chinese bakeshop foods–it’s for all home bakers who want exciting new recipes to add to their repertoires.
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Additional information
| Publisher | Harper Horizon (28 Oct. 2021) |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Hardcover | 288 pages |
| ISBN-10 | 0785238999 |
| ISBN-13 | 978-0785238997 |
| Dimensions | 19.81 x 2.29 x 26.16 cm |
by WM
The layout and thought having gone into the book is really visible. The book so far is enabling me to create good unusual fayre. I will update when further ahead with the recipes.
by missmocha
There are a lot of pictures and recipes in this book. A lot of traditional Chinese cakes and buns and the odd snacks. I myself is also pro baker and find a lot of the recipes already familiar, such as using the water roux to make fluffy bread. I also learned a few new recipes reading this book. However, I have given this book 3 star because of the inconvenience of the layout of this book. Some recipes such as mother of all bread or the Chinese sponge cake can be reused in many recipes, but I think to keep referring back to the page where it shows the recipe for sponge cake (for example whilst making matcha Swiss roll kept having to flip back and forth page) this can be inconvenient for people that are baking with the book open. Hands get messy and so on.. secondly, when on a recipe I find have to skim through the unnecessary details just to get to the how to make it section. Had the instructions been in paragraphs it would be easier to read. And last of all, congee (Chinese porridge) is better washed to get rid of all the dirt in rice.. the grains of rice harbours a lot of dirt, no different to rinsing lentils, and lentils can be very very dirty. Rice is equally dirty. The instruction in the book was to tell us NOT to wash it, when I read that I felt disgusted. We Chinese always wash our dried rice before we boil. I believe her method was to make it more starchy. But don’t do it!
by Neville Townsend
I got this book because I love chinese food and I’ve heard a lot about milk bread and I wanted to try it. Surprisingly the majority of the ingredients you will probably already have in your cupboards. Also, it isn’t that hard. You don’t need to be an experienced baker to produce anything in this book. The recipes are easy to follow and explained really well.
Anyway, I have now successfully tried and enjoyed milk bread. Absolutely loved it. Now I’m on to the next.
Give it a go you won’t be disappointed.
by Kindle Customer
There have been very few books dedicated to the art of Chinese pastries and those that do are simply pale imitations done by celebrities or as part of a general book on Chinese food, and rarely authentic. As a Chinese person who has devoured these pastries, who better than to critique the work of Kristina Cho.
This book is dedicated to her Gung Gung and Por Por and contains all of the tasty morsels that you can see in the windows of Gerrard Street in London’s Chinatown and follows the Hong Kong café culture. A full recipe index is at the end of this review.
The book is split into sections
Bread
Sweet Buns
Savoury buns
Cakes and Tarts
Fortune Cookies
Chinese Breakfast
Tea
The book contains the essentials of what is needed from explaining the different types of flours used in Chinese baking to the equipment needed to make those fluffy bao and sweet tarts.
The bread section begins with the foundation of all Chinese bread making, the tangzhong method for milk bread also known as Hokkaido or Shokupan.
Also included in this section is the recipe for bao buns, the fluffy bread, pleated or cracked. The method will give you a bao dough although for most, this will be yellow in nature as most traditional methods use bao or bleached flour.
The bun section contains all of those buns that you see in Chinatown bakeries, from Bo Lo bao to cocktail buns. Here you are guided as to how to form your buns including that all important smooth texture. My personal favourite is the coconut cream bun. The book is not afraid to create new flavours and the author often mixes creams with green tea.
The savoury section has the char siu bao with both the bun and the char siu recipes although the book uses food colouring, there are better char siu recipes for the bun. The book also includes the lesser known chicken and mushroom bao.
The cake section has all the recipes you want and rarely seen in other books, from Ma Lai Gao to Chinese Sponge Cakes. This section also includes Chinese Swiss Roll, 2 types of egg tart, dan tat and po tat. One criticism here is that the dan tat doesn’t have those layers.
The most important recipe in here though is the mooncake recipe eat during the Chinese mid-autumn festival Jūng-chāu Jit. Mooncakes are expensive to buy in Chinatown. Several recipes from the traditional mooncake and paste to the snow skin mooncakes.
The cookie section is the weakest part of the book but is made up for with the inclusion of a mochi recipe.
The breakfast section includes a selection of dim sum. Here the book explains the different starches used to make the dumplings but there are books which have the dumpling recipes, namely Lee Anne Wong, Brendan Pang and Pippa Middlehurst. It does have a recipe for Lo Bak Gao or turnip cake though.
The final chapter in the book is dedicated to the beverages served in the Tea Houses including Li Cha or literally milk tea.
The book is the best yet on Chinese baking written in English, just for the mooncake and milk bread recipes. It also takes you into a world of the art of steamed breads and traditional Chinese cakes, the types you see in the back of Chinatown or those in the secret Lo’s Noodle Factory.
Excellent book for cakes and breads, look elsewhere for dumplings is a fair summary. Most recipes have dual measurements but some recipes only have cups, but that is not to detract from a fine book.
RECIPE INDEX
Mother of All Milk Bread
The Foundations of Milk Bread
Mother of All Milk Bread
There’s More than One Way to Form a Loaf
Matcha and Black Sesame Marbled Milk Bread
Black Sesame Paste
Fluffy Steamed Bun Dough
How to Avoid Collapsed Dough
Crispy Chinese Sausage and Cilantro Pancakes
Youtiao (Chinese Doughnut)
Brown Sugar Shao Bing
Moo Shu Wrappers
Mo
Xi’an-Style Braised Lamb Ro Jia Mao
Fay Da | New York City
The Almighty Pineapple Bun (Bo Lo Bao)
“Pinching and Pulling” the Dough
Score and Twist
Cocktail Buns (Gai Mei Bao)
Red Bean Swirl Buns
Red Bean Paste
Coconut Jasmine Cream Buns
Jasmine Whipped Cream
Egg Custard Buns (Nai Wong Bao)
After-School PB&J Buns
Chocolate Nutella Loaf
Asian Pear Turnovers with Miso Glaze
Sweet Potato and Brown Sugar Mantou
Rhubarb and Cream Cheese Buns
Milk Bread Doughnuts with Salted Egg Yolk Cream
Salted Egg Yolks
Taro Leaf Buns
Taro Paste
Very Chill Jam Buns
Keeping Tradition with Auntie Lydia
Char Siu Bao (BBQ Pork Buns)
Char Siu Pork
Pork Floss and Seaweed Pull-Apart Rolls
Miso Corn Buns
Tuna Buns
Hot Dog Flower Buns
Gingery Bok Choy and Gai Lan Steamed Buns
Steamed Spring Chicken Buns
Mushroom Mushroom Buns
Crispy Panko Pork Chop Sandwiches
Thanksgiving Leftover Gua Bao
Sambal and Parmesan Buns
Curry Chicken Puffs
Everything Bagel Bao
Garlic and Chive Whole-Wheat Flower Buns
Deep-Dish Pepperoni Bread
Eastern Bakery | San Francisco
Pau Pau’s Steamed Cupcakes (Fa Gao)
Malay Cake (Ma Lai Gao)
White Pizza (White Sugar Cake, Bai Tang Gao)
Chinese Celebration Calendar
Chinese Sponge Cake
Variation: Paper Cupcakes
Shiny Fruit Cream Cake
Cake Styles
Sugar Glaze
Matcha and Jasmine Swiss Roll
Coffee Crunch Swiss Roll
Black Sesame Soufflé Cheesecake
Mango Mousse Cake
Chinese Puff Pastry
Classic Egg Tarts (Dan Tat)
Macau-Style Egg Tarts (Po Tat)
Lemon Coconut Tarts
Chocolate and Salted Peanut Crepe Cake
Salted Peanut Whipped Cream
The Art of Mooncakes
Red Bean and Salted Egg Yolk Mooncakes
Honey Pistachio Mooncakes
No Mooncake Mold? No Problem.
Thousand Layer Mooncakes with White Lotus Seed Paste
White Lotus Seed Paste
Snow Skin Ice Cream Mooncakes
Goong Goong’s Almond Cookies
Coconut and Peanut Mochi Balls
Taiwanese Pineapple Cakes
Fried Sesame Balls
Pistachio Palmiers
Kinako Sewing Tin Butter Cookies
Matcha and Hojicha Cream Puffs
Sesame Crisps
Chocolate-Hazelnut Macau-Style Cookies
Phoenix Bakery | Los Angeles
Crystal Shrimp Dumplings (Har Gow)
A Lesson in Starches
Rose Siu Mai
Bacon and Kale Potstickers
The Simplest Jook
Fan Tuan
Maple Bubble Waffles
Jianbing You Can Actually Make at Home
Turnip Cake (Lo Bak Gao)
Hong Kong–Style French Toast
Savory Soy Milk with All the Fixings
Sausage, Egg, and Cheese Sheng Jian Bao (SEC SJB)
Ray’s Cafe & Tea House | Philadelphia
Chrysanthemum Tea
Hong Kong Milk Tea (Li Cha)
Yuenyeung
Sparkling Lime Matcha
Strawberry Jasmine Milk Tea
Lychee-Lemon Iced Tea
Coffee with Grass Jelly
Grass Jelly
by Leah Murphy
Love this book, beautifully written and easy to follow recipes with great instructions. Just received it this week and have already made the milk bread and sponge, both lovely. Helps when I am missing Hong Kong food.
by M. Raymond
A wonderful book on Chinese baking lovely recipe’s with clear step by step instructions and good photos throughout.
I received this book from the publishers via Netgalley for a review.
by kyithfantasy
I received an electronic review copy of this book from the publisher, and here are my thoughts.
I have lived in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and this book brings back so many memories of the sweet and savory treats that I miss. Thanks to this book, I will be able to make them for myself.
If you’re also missing some of these classic treats from a Chinese bakery, this book will inspire you to make your own. It has clear step-by-step instructions and photos for every dish.
Highly recommended!
by missmocha
Love the many cooking recipes