Homemade Steamed Buns

Sift the flour. In a mixing bowl combine the flour, sugar, yeast and salt. Mix well about 1 minute. Pour in olive oil and water. Mix well. Now clean your dry working surface and knead by hand about 10 minutes.

Cover the dough and let rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes. After that, punch the dough down and make 15 round lemon-sized balls.

Now take out each ball and roll out with a rolling pin until you get a disk (2 1/2-inch diameter and 1/4-inch thick).

To make the coconut filling, in a thick-bottomed pan, put coconut pani, cinnamon and sugar and bring to a boil (you need it to be around 100ºC degrees so use a thermometer). Then add the pani mixture to the desiccated coconut and mix well. Let cool.

Now place about 1 teaspoon of sweet coconut mixture in the middle of each disk. Roll into a ball. Next shape the dough into a oval shape. Using sharp scissors, snip the top of the dough to form prickles to shape it like a porcupine.

Now put the porcupine on top of oil paper or baking paper. Place porcupine buns in a steamer and steam over a pan of boiling water for about 10 minutes. When the porcupine buns are cooked, remove from the steamer and place on a dish.

After that, you can decorate the porcupine buns with eyes, a mouth and whiskers. I’ve done so in the photo using food coloring for the eyes and mouth and coconut husk for the whiskers.

Serve warm.

Enjoy.