Black Sesame Dessert Adventure

“So, for lunch tomorrow, I was thinking we could go to Din Tai Fung,” our friend Dan said casually as he drove us away from downtown Portland.

This was in February, before things got crazy. Before fear and anxiety threatened to vanquish calm and reason. Before everything was turned upside-down by the novel coronavirus pandemic. I like to remember that period of time. Concentrating on it makes me calmer.

His statement was a big deal. Until that very moment, we didn’t know that a location had opened in the area. I exclaimed earnestly from the backseat, “My dreams are coming true!”

For years, Guillaume had raved about the Taiwanese restaurant chain known for their soup dumplings. They only have a handful of restaurants on the West Coast, and I hadn’t been yet.

The glorious day arrived. Cue the belt-loosening. Our table could barely hold all the food that arrived: steaming bowls of chicken soup, generous platters of noodles, fried rice, and garlic cabbage plus bamboo steamer baskets full of savory dumplings.

Even though I could feel myself getting full, my “dessert stomach” still had room, as my dear friend Laurel’s dad used to say. The black sesame and mochi dessert dumplings unleashed the most excitement.

“It tastes like chocolate,” the experts at the table told me. “A waiter at the Bellevue location once said that they put peanut butter in it.” They were easily my favorite over taro and red bean, although the preschoolers in our party were divided on the subject.

Back home in Colorado, Guillaume and I bought a large bottle of black sesame seeds. Maybe trying to make the dessert would be a good distraction. But the days dragged by. Grocery shopping became fraught. The experimental baking stakes felt stupidly high.

Tired of procrastinating, I used Lu’s recipe on the blog Super Nummy as a starting point. It called for my old nemesis, yeasted dough, rather than Din Tai Fung’s hot water dough. I cut the amount in half to conserve flour. It was exactly right amount to make smaller bite-sized buns. I also omitted baking powder since high altitude makes for super-proofing, but it might have produced fluffier buns so that’s optional below.

Despite having a stand mixer dough hook attachment, I wanted to pound the dough by hand to get a feel for it. And, honestly, to unleash pent-up Greek rage. Lacking a full-sized food processor, I ground the filling in our relatively new blender. I used raw sugar leftover from a cider doughnut cake recipe to help speed the grinding process.

Adding a pinch of salt and some dry-roasted unsalted peanuts really did produce a filling that tasted close to Din Tai Fung’s. The bun part wasn’t what they do, and could have been a bit sweeter, but as a delivery method for the filling, it’s serviceable. We’re still thinking up new dessert delivery methods for that filling. So good.

Stay safe out there. We’ll get through this, one bun at a time.

Black Sesame Dessert Steamed Buns

Makes around 36

Dough:
½ packet rapid rise active yeast (3.5g)
½ Tbsp. sugar
¼ tsp. salt
⅔ C. lukewarm water, plus more if needed
1½ C. all-purpose flour
½ C. whole wheat flour
½ tsp. baking powder (optional)

Filling:
1 C. black sesame seeds (135g)
⅓ C. dry roasted unsalted peanuts (45g)
⅓ C. raw sugar (70g), plus more to taste
⅓ C. water
Sprinkle of salt

Dough: Add the yeast and sugar to the water in a glass measuring cup. Make sure it bubbles, indicating that the yeast is alive.

Sift the flours into a large mixing bowl. Whisk in the salt. Add the yeasty mixture. Mix together by hand for several minutes until you have a rough dough. Then knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until it’s smooth.

Lightly coat the interior of a clean mixing bowl with a neutral oil. Set the dough inside, cover with plastic wrap or a wet cloth. Allow to sit at room temperature until doubled in size, around two hours at sea level, about an hour and a half at altitude.

Filling: Pour the black sesame seeds into a wide skillet over medium-low heat. They should be a single layer. Toast lightly, stirring frequently. Right when the seeds smell fragrant, take the skillet off the burner. (They’re easy to burn due to the dark color.)

In a blender or regular-sized food processor, add the toasted seeds, peanuts, raw sugar, water, and a pinch of salt. Blend on medium-low speed, occasionally scraping down the sides with a spatula, for around 30 minutes or until you have a relatively smooth paste. Taste for texture and flavor, adding more sugar if needed. Mine needed an extra tablespoon of raw sugar.

Scrape into a medium-sized bowl, cover with a lid or plastic wrap, and set aside at room temperature until the dough is ready.

Assembly: Once the dough has doubled in size, gently punch it down. Carefully empty the bowl of dough out onto a clean surface. Stretch the dough into a long cylinder. Cut it into three sections using a dull knife or bench scraper to protect your surface. Cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap or a damp cloth to avoid dry-out.

There are different methods you could use to assemble the buns. Here’s what I did: I placed around a ¼ cup of all-purpose flour on my work surface. Using the bench scraper, I cut several ½-inch chunks of dough from the cylinder, and put the piece of plastic wrap back over the rest.

Using floured fingers, I pressed each dough piece out into a flat round circle, like a mini pizza. I used two small spoons to get about a teaspoon-sized blob of filling in the middle of each dough circle. I pulled two edges of the dough over part of the filling and pinched them together. Then I kept pinching the dough together, moving in one direction, until it looked kind of like a bun.

After assembling two or three buns, place them in one or two large lidded or covered containers, leaving some room between them. Keep going until you’ve used up all the dough and filling.

Let the buns rise again for about 20 to 30 minutes. While they’re rising, cut squares of parchment paper sized to fit each bun. Once the buns rose, I placed each one on parchment.

If you have a bamboo steamer, you know what to do. Lacking one, we put a flat steam inset inside a medium lidded pot and set it to boil. Once the water is boiling, turn the heat down to medium-low (about 3.0 on a digital stovetop). Carefully place a bunch of buns in the steamer, making sure the parchment stays with them. Cover with a lid and steam for 10 minutes.

Remove from heat but leave the lid on and let the buns sit for another 10 minutes. Best eaten warm.

Continue steaming the rest of the buns this way, putting the steamed ones aside to cool. Refrigerate any that you’re not eating immediately.

Leftovers: Place refrigerated steamed buns and their parchment squares in a steamer basket or bamboo container over simmering water. Cover and steam for 5 minutes. I haven’t tried this, but apparently leftover buns can be frozen. Put frozen buns directly into the steamer setup, but steam for a total of 10 minutes.