This special treat is from my hubby's ancestral home town, Shunde 順德, a city located in Guangdong province. Shunde is very famous for its food culture, known as the birthplace of Cantonese cuisine and now a Unesco designated City of Gastronomy. One of the most famous of the dishes that originate from Shunde might be this traditional Chinese milk pudding!
Known as Double Skin Milk Pudding 雙皮奶 this pudding is distinctive for its lovely double layer of wrinkled milk skin on top, hiding a soft and oh! so lusciously creamy, milky pudding below. Man oh man, when we go to Shunde we totally pig out on this amazing puddding! Nom, nom, nom...
Sometimes back home far away in HK, we do long for it so. Turns out this luscious pud is pretty straightforward to make at home!
Let's start with the key to it all: milk. Traditionally the milk used for this pudding is buffalo milk which has a high milk fat content of around 8%. This extra fat helps to form the skin and also intensifies the milky flavor. But buffalo milk doesn't sell in grocery shops, amirite? At least I've never seen any. So we used the highest fat milk we could find here in HK which has a milk fat percent of 4.3%.
Side note: Omgosh, can I say that we're loving this high fat milk! We've been using it to drink and to make homemade yogurt (post pending) and it's sooo amazing. It tastes really really good, like 'real' milk. Made me like milk again, lol.
I just now realized that if you can't find high fat milk at the store you can mix regular milk (fat content approx 3.25%) with cream (fat content varies from 12% to as much as 60%, check cream label to find %) to create a higher fat milk. There's a formula to calculate the mix here. Hummm...something to try next time. I suspect that higher fat content milk makes from a thicker skin. Which is good.
(Pssst...I just found a whole milk with 6% milk fat online here.)
The first step to make the Double Skin Milk Pudding is to heat the milk to around 180°F (82°C). This heating kills any bacteria present and also denatures the whey proteins in milk, changing the milk to be thicker in texture. Easy enough to do this step as long as you have a food thermometer.
Once the milk is heated to the correct temperature it is immediately poured into the final serving bowls to cool. We used our normal rice bowls for this purpose but if you want smaller portions use smaller bowls.
You can see the skin form on the surface as the milk cools. Do you see the slight wrinkling? That's it, the first skin for our Double Skin Milk Pudding.
On to making a double skin for our milk pudding. Why a double skin, you might be asking? Why not just have one darn skin and be done with it? Well, the single skin is very thin, so a double skin makes for a thicker skin that can be properly enjoyed for its delicate texture and taste.
To create the double skin we first gently pierce a hole near the side of the pudding bowl and pour out the milk into a larger bowl, leaving the first skin behind in the pudding bowl with a bit of milk to float it up. In the photo above you can see a bit of the milk skin on the left side, clinging to the bottom of the bowl after most of the milk has been poured out.
We're gonna need two other ingredients for this fab pudding, egg whites and sugar! Mix these two pudding friendly ingredients up nice and easy in a bowl.
Sugar is gonna sweeten the pud slightly while the egg whites are gonna help it firm up. Regarding the egg whites, know that how much you use will determine the firmness of the final pudding. We used about 2.5oz (70g) of egg whites and ended up with the most lusciously soft and creamy pudding that just held together. Heavenly and just how we like it! If you like something more firm use a bit more egg white, up to 2.8oz (80g).
Mix the egg whites and sugar mixture with the milk that was poured out of the pudding bowls. Pass the milk/egg/sugar mixture a couple of times through a strainer to get rid of any bumps and bubbles. Smooth as silk pud as a result.
Now back to your pudding bowls containing the first skin. You're going to pour the milk/egg/sugar mix back into the pudding bowls, pouring along the side of the bowl. The first milk skin should rise up to the top of the milk again as you pour. Magic!
Fill all the bowls and it's time to steam! Carefully place into a steamer and steam away at high heat for a brief period, then turn off heat and let the rest of the cooking take place with residual heat. The pudding is cooked when the center wobbles only a little when jiggled.
Remove that beautiful white pud from the heat. As your now steamed pudding cools a second skin will form, incorporating the first skin into it, ta-da: double skin! Now your pudding is ready to eat, warm and delicious. Or, better yet IMHO, chill the pudding and have that milky creamy sweetness cold!
What taste then our lovely Double Skin Milk Pudding? The milky double skin on top is slightly sweet, slightly nutty with a most lovely delicate texture. The pud below is just pure creamy, milky, luscious goodness. Just firm enough to hold and no more, ready to be spooned greedily into your mouth to melt away in milky yummiliciousness! Oh...so good...
Double Skin Milk Pudding Recipe
雙皮奶
(4 servings) Prep: 5 mins Cooling: 15 mins Cook: 25 mins
Ingredients:
- food thermometer
- 434 ml high fat whole milk, 450g
- 2.5-2.8 oz egg white, 70-80g
- 1/4 cup sugar, 40g
- 4 sheets edible rice paper (optional)
Directions:
Cook the milk: Heat the milk to 180°F (82°C). Remove immediately from heat and pour into four pudding bowls in equal portions. Let the bowls of heated milk cool for 20 mins or until a skin is formed on top of the milk.
Separate milk from 1st skin: Use a sharp tip to poke a hold through the milk skin near the side of the bowl. Carefully pour out most of the milk into a large mixing bowl, leaving the skin behind. Remember to leave enough milk in the pudding bowl to keep the skin afloat, about 1/2 to 3/4 inch or so.
Prepare pudding mixture: Add egg white to bowl and whisk until slightly frothy. Add in sugar and the milk removed from pudding bowls. Stir to mix. Pour this mixture through a strainer twice to remove bubbles and make the pudding smooth as possible.
Add pudding mixture to bowls: Pour the pudding mixture back into pudding bowls. Do this by tilting the bowl slightly and then pouring the mixture in along the side of the bowl. The 1st skin should float up to sit on top of the pudding mixture.
Steam the puddings: Place the pudding bowls into a steamer and steam over high heat for 5 mins. After 5 mins turn the heat off but leave the puddings where they are for 15 mins to continue cooking in the residual heat. When the puddings wobble only in the center when jiggled they are ready. The 2nd skin will form as the pudding cools, incorporating the 1st skin, making the double skin.
Optional: If you would like a thicker skin you could cut edible rice paper sheets to size and place on top the pudding after steaming. As the pudding cools the rice paper will incorporate into the milk skin.
Steaming Tip: To prevent water dripping into the pudding from the lid place a cloth towel over the steamer before placing lid on. Take the ends of towel sticking out and wrap up to sit on top of the lid.
Serve or chill: Serve the pudding while warm, milky, creamy and yummy. Or you can also refrigerate the pudding and have the pudding chilled. Milk-tastic, amirite?
Magnificent Milkiness at The Hong Kong Cookery:
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