Pumpkin kikaku 南瓜喜板

Even though my mom is Hakka and she cooks lots of great Hakka delicacies, and my husband's family is Hakka, and they too cooks superb Hakka dishes, I have never tried kikaku before (they call this a Hakka dish)..hmmm... I wonder.

 

But both my son and I fall in love with it the first time we tried it. It's not exactly fluffy like pao, it's more to chewy and soft. I cut down the sugar content from the original recipe, and I made this in the morning for our breakfast. I must have been rushing, that's why my kikaku didn't come out smooth, arghh.. but it tasted good still nonetheless. One recipe yielded about 15-16 kikaku, so we had them for breakfast, left some for hubby and maid and brought the rest to the nanny's. Must thank my friend Yunicko for introducing me the recipe.

 

 

 

Here's the recipe, this recipe yields about 15-16 kikaku

• 150g all purpose flour
• 125g glutinous rice flour
• 80g sugar (I only used 60g brown sugar)
• 1tsp instant active dry yeast
• 120g pumpkin puree (pumpkin, steam-cooked and pureed) 
• 100g water
• 1tbsp vegetable oil (I used grapeseed oil)

1. Mix all ingredients, except for veg oil, until texture turns into a dough. Slowly drizzle in veg oil and knead till smooth.
2. Grab about 50g of the dough and knead into small ball and place on baking paper (or banana leaves, in my case, I used cupcake liner).
3. Cover up and let it proof for about an hour*. (I let mine proof in an enclosed oven, not on)
4. Steam for 10min.

*Note:

I did a little research after seeing that my kikaku didn't turn out to be smooth like how it should be, here's what you should take note on:

• Do not poof for too long, over-proved dough will turn wrinkly. Some sources from the other bloggers proof for 30min. But the problem is they never mention how to know when the kikaku is ready to be steamed.  
• Once the kikaku has been steamed for 10min, lift the lid to a little gap to allow the steam to release, this is to avoid sudden drop in temperature which will turn the kikaku wrinkly.