Homemade Steamed Buns

I AM STELLA FROM SRI LANKA
These buns are very soft and delicious.You can adapt this bun recipe to your own taste. A kid-friendly recipe, they're shaped like a porcupine!

                                                 

                                                   

• FOR THE BUNS:
• ½ pounds, ⅞ ounces, weight Bread Flour
• ¼ ounces, weight Sugar
• ¼ ounces, weight Yeast, Active Dry
• ½ teaspoons Salt To Taste
• 1 teaspoon Olive Oil
• 8 tablespoons, 2 teaspoons, 6 pinches Water
• _____
• FOR THE FILLING:
• 3 tablespoons, 1 teaspoon, 2-⅓ pinches Coconut Pani Or Coconut Treacle
• ¼ teaspoons Cinnamon
• ½ teaspoons Sugar
• 3-⅝ ounces, weight Desiccated Coconut

             

Preparation Instructions

Sift the flour. In a mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt. Mix well about 1 minute. Pour in olive oil and water. Mix well. Now clean your dry working surface and knead by hand about 10 minutes.
Cover the dough and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes. After that, punch the dough down and make 15 round lemon-sized balls.
Now take out each ball and roll out with a rolling pin until you get a disk (2 1/2-inch diameter and 1/4-inch thick).
To make the coconut filling, in a thick-bottomed pan, put coconut pani, cinnamon and sugar and bring to a boil (you need it to be around 100ºC degrees so use a thermometer). Then add the pani mixture to the desiccated coconut and mix well. Let cool.
Now place about 1 teaspoon of sweet coconut mixture in the middle of each disk. Roll into a ball. Next shape the dough into a oval shape. Using sharp scissors, snip the top of the dough to form prickles to shape it like a porcupine.
Now put the porcupine on top of oil paper or baking paper. Place porcupine buns in a steamer and steam over a pan of boiling water for about 10 minutes. When the porcupine buns are cooked, remove from the steamer and place on a dish.
After that, you can decorate the porcupine buns with eyes, a mouth and whiskers. I’ve done so in the photo using food coloring for the eyes and mouth and coconut husk for the whiskers.
Serve warm.