panipopo (coconut buns!)

ready for the oven! 

i do not live for samoan food... but i also don't dislike it. there are a few things however, that make me super happy and one of them is panipopo! i love them. a soft, sweet bun, in a delicious coconut cream sauce. i have always wanted to learn to make them - and when we went to melbourne at the beginning of the month, my husbands lovely cousin mali taught me how (this may or may not have been because my mother-in-law said don't bother coming back if you don't learn how. hahaha!) using an old family recipe... which unfortunately didn't help my white girl cooking skills as it's mostly done by feel, not measuring  - and i had no idea what i was doing! 

i have her recipe and i know it will work with trial and error, but i confess, i did some googling to see if i could find something with exact measurements that looked similar... and happy days! i did here at ilovecoconutcream.com! apologies (and thanks!) for me posting your recipe here, it's simply so i can find it easily in the future and know the little changes i made for us.

coconut buns

buns

1 sachet active dry yeast (i measured out 7g from a packet on a scale)

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

3 - 3 1/2 cups plain flour

coconut cream sauce

1 can (400ml coconut cream)

2 tablespoons sugar

1/2 cup water

Place the yeast,  and warm water in a large bowl and leave for around 10 minutes for the yeast to start activating. Add oil, egg and sugar to the yeast mixture and then slowly add most of the flour reserving around 1/4-1/2 cup. Mix to form a soft dough, adding the reserved flour if the dough is too wet or sticky.  You want a fairly dry dough but still ‘soft’ enough to knead. Knead the dough on a floured board for around 10 minutes until its smooth and elastic.  Take care to not add too much flour to the dough at this stage otherwise it can make the buns have more of scone texture rather than a bread one. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover and leave in warm place to rise until doubled in volume (approx. 1 hour). Knock down dough (punch fist into the centre) and then knead for another couple of minutes. Pull pieces of dough to roll into 12 sausages then wrap around your fingers to make a "rose" kind of shape, then press the end onto the rest of the dough to lock it into place. Place in a greased baking dish evenly spaced. Leave in a warm place to double in size (approximately 45 minutes).

Mix coconut cream, sugar and water until sugar is dissolved. Brush tops of coconut buns with some this mixture. (i didn't actually do this!) Then once the buns have doubled in size, pour 3/4 of the coconut sauce over the buns. Place in preheated oven 190 degrees celcius and bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown and a skewer inserted into the middle bun comes out clean. Leave buns in the baking dish to cool for 20 minutes. If you love to have extra creamy buns then pour more sauce on in the final 5 minutes of baking.

thank you guys for your amazing recipe!! i am super grateful to find one with measurements (although saying that, i have a friend who gets super annoyed because she wants my cauliflower cheese recipe but there isn't one, because i learned it from my mum and it's the same sort of thing) and loved trying it out.

 they worked out great (even my mother in law said so, and considering she's samoan, that's saying something!!) - although i must admit, there wasn't nearly enough sauce for my liking. i don't know if i a) cooked them for a little too long (i did leave them in there for longer than suggested, but that was because i had my oven on at a lower temperature because i was cooking something else - our dinner - at the same time...) b) should have reserved some sauce and poured it over near the end as the recipe says c) it was because i didn't brush them prior to them rising for the second time? although i really don't see how that would affect how creamy they were or c) need to make double the sauce next time.

who knows?! i guess it's just trial and error and we will see how we go next time! ♥