Pulut Hitam (Black Glutinous Rice) Bread Buns with Coconut Cream Cheese 黑糯米面包

I guess to many, it comes with no surprise that I will eventually churn out this recipe. Exploring new flavours can be really fun, even though the end result can't be guaranteed. But applying the same bread baking techniques, it should pretty much be a success. But I realise I am posting up quite a fair bit of bread recipes lately. :P Old habits hard to kick. Yay to carb love! This Pulut Hitam bread is another keeper, especially useful when you have left over Pulut Hitam BuBur. Hop over to my previous post for the dessert porridge and Pulut Hitam chiffon cake recipe of you missed it. ;)

Eh...pardon that liao liao (wrinkly) look on the buns. I guess my shaping skill can still use some more practice. :P But the dough is actually quite easy to handle or shape. I probably got greedy and stuffed too much filling and thus this "abstract" look on them. Anyway, like my better half would always comfort me "Ai ya, delicious can already lah!". :P

From the ingredients, you can already how fragrant and rich these buns are. Added both coconut cream and fresh milk, but you can opt to use all coconut cream. But as for the butter and coconut oil, I suggest adding both. Coconut oil gives it that super nice aroma and butter makes it creamier after taste. So yeah, don't skim on those fats. :P

Ingredients for Pulut Hitam Buns (with coconut cream cheese) 

350 g bread flour

100 g Pulut Hitam Bubur (Black glutinous rice dessert porridge, thick, refer to here fore recipe)

30 g caster sugar

1/3 tsp salt

5 g instant active yeast

90 ml coconut cream

110-120 ml fresh milk

20 ml coconut oil

25 g unsalted butter, room temperature

• In a large mixing bowl, add in all the ingredients except the butter.

• Knead everything together at medium low speed. Dough will be sticky at first but continue to knead for 5 minutes and break 3 minutes until the dough pulls away from the side of the mixing bowl.

• You can see from the above pic that the dough is soft and elastic but has already pulled away from the mixing bowl. At this point, add in the room temperature butter and continue to knead again. Once the dough pulls clean away from the side of the bowl, it is ready. You can test by doing the window panel test. Taking a portion and stretch it and if you can stretch it to the thinest and yet doesn't break it, thats window panel stage.

• Place the dough back in the bowl but make sure you grease it with some oil or butter. Cover with plastic wrap and let proof till doubled in size or for 1.5hrs.

• Punch out the air and weigh out 15 portions of 40 g (total 600 g) of dough. Any left over buns can be made into any other small buns of your reference. (Have fun shaping and use your creativity!). 
• In the meantime, you can make the coconut cream cheese filling. You can opt to leave them plain or fill them with some other ingredients like red bean paste etc.

Coconut Cream Cheese Filling 

200 g cream cheese room temperature

1 tsp fresh lemon juice

2 tbsp coconut oil

2 tbsp confectioner's sugar (sifted)

- Mix all the ingredients together till creamy and smooth.

• Take one of the 40 g dough portion. Press it flat into an oval shape. Place about one tbsp of the coconut cream cheese filling on the wider surface top. Then seal up the edges, and the bun will look at a drumstick.

•  Note that the middle bun will be all round, no need to shape it like a drumstick. 

• Repeat for the rest of the dough portions and carefully place them into a greased 8" round baking dish. Then cover with plastic wrap and let proof for 30 minutes and preheat the oven to 175C.

• Bake in the preheated oven for 25-28 minutes till golden brown. Remove from baking dish and let cool on the rack completely before storage...or just tear off a bun and enjoy!

My kitchen... in fact my whole house was filled with such wonderful aroma! Coconut and pulut hitam seems like the prefect combination. 

With the addition of cooked glutinous rice to the dough helps makes the dough extra soft and moist.

Hope this last shot will convince you enough to give this recipe a try. Fluffy goodness~!

So the next time you cooked Pulut Hitam BuBur, and have some left over (or just purposely set aside 100g), make sure you bake these fluffy buns. ;)

Happy baking and enjoy your day ahead everyone!