Pandan Bread 香蘭麵包

This delicious bread is made by using the natural flavor and coloring from the pandan leaf.   Yes, that's right, an actual leaf!  The pandan leaf is so packed with flavor and color that it is used to flavor all kinds of foods from the sweet to the savory!

My little girl has always loved the floral, vanilla-y, grassy fragrance and flavor of the pandan leaf and so has long begged me to make her some homemade pandan bread.  Finally I have gotten around to it, coincidentally just in time for St. Patrick's Day.  Make yourself some lucky Pandan Bread 香蘭麵包: deliciously aromatic, soft and fluffy, and verily luckily green!

Chinese Steamed Buns Mantou | Chinese Basic Dough 饅頭

My dearest grandma 奶奶 used to make basketfuls of these basic chinese steamed buns, known as Mantou 饅頭, and feed them to us hungry children day in and day out, filling our hungry growing tummies with this sweet fluffy bread.  

These buns are eaten all over China as breakfast, for a quick snack or just whenever one needs a filler.  When I was in my teens I could eat probably the whole plateful of the bread you can seen in the photo above in one go...yup, kinda gross but true, I could eat a lot of food back then.  

These classic Chinese buns are quite simple to make and delicious to eat, just sweet, white puffs of cloud like yummiliciousness.   The same dough is also a Chinese Basic Dough that can also be used to make all kinds of other stuffed and filled chinese buns and breads and the like!

Pineapple Buns 菠蘿包

This recipe is for our reader Raymond who asked for a recipe for Pineapple Buns with the real traditional crackle cookie tops.

I hope that this recipe is the one he was looking for, anyways this is the one that we know as the traditional Pineapple Bun, or 菠蘿包, a soft fluffy bun underneath and a crunchy crumbly crackled sweet cookie like crust on top, invented in Hong Kong in the sixties and still a standard at all Hong Kong traditional bakeries.

A taste sensation, the cookie crust crumbles delightfully in your mouth when you bite into the soft warm tender bun.  Pineapple Bun, named for the texture of the crackle crust that resembles the real pineapple, is a real special afternoon or breakfast treat and an absolutely unique Hong Kong style bake!

Milk Bread Tangzhong 湯種牛奶麵包

I love making bread, there's nothing in this world as wonderful as the heavenly smell of baking bread emanating from your very own oven!  

But the thing about making bread is, after all that toil and trouble, homemade bread is amazing when still warm, great when cooled, still yummy on the second day, but downhill from then on.  It just gets stale so fast!  I've tried different methods of keeping the bread, which help only a bit.  

What I really want is to be able to make a bread and enjoy it for a good while, make sandwiches, have some toast, you know...just have a bit of bread about the house.  Now, finally, I have found this amazing Milk Bread Tangzhong 湯種牛奶麵包 that not only lasts a good long while but is soft, fluffy and tender yet strong enough to use as a sandwich bread.  Plus it's so easy to make and bake, it's become my favorite bread to make!

Best Banana Bread

If you're anything like us you'll know what I mean when I say that you've got to keep the cookie jar supplied.  I don't like to buy sweet treats from the stores, preferring to make them myself.  But the family eats the sweet treats as fast as I can make them!  And oftentimes when I'm busy doing this and that it always feels like I don't have enough time.  

That's why I love, love, love this banana bread recipe so much!  It's really easy, quick and, best of all, this Best Banana Bread 香蕉麵包 comes out tender and moist and super duper yummilicious every time!