Purple, Blue or Black?

Don't you just love that rich vibrant purple hue?

  

After the batch of delicious Pumpkin Steamed Buns, I was thinking of what other steamed buns I could make by substituting the pumpkin in the recipe. The first thing that came to my mind was purple sweet potatoes. The buns would look so pretty in a purple hue I imagined, like my Purple Sweet Potato Swiss Roll here.  

So purple sweet potato steamed buns I made, or so i thought!

Look what I've got!

Yup, no kidding, those steamed buns were made from PURPLE sweet potatoes! It's just so strange how it ended up blue black. Haha! At a glance they look like bamboo charcoal mantous!  Would anyone please explain what happened? Is it because of oxidation?
Despite the undesirable and rather unappetizing colour, the steamed buns tasted fine and were actually good eaten warm with lashings of  butter.


Purple Sweet Potato Steamed Buns/Mantou

Ingredients:
50gm sugar
150gm mashed purple sweet potato
6 tbs water (more or less depending on the moistness of sweet potato)
1tsp instant dry yeast
150gm pau flour (or plain flour)
1tsp double action baking powder
10gm butter

Method:
1. Combine sugar, mashed purple sweet potatoes, water and yeast.
2. Combine pau flour, double action baking powder and butter and mix to form crumbs.
3. Mix (1) and (2) together to form dough.
4. Knead dough until smooth and no longer sticky.
5. Let dough proof in a warm place until double in size. Cover it.
6. After proofing, punch down the dough and knead for 2 mins and roll out  into a rectangle.
7. Slowly roll up like swiss rolls, cut into equal pieces.
8. Cover and let buns proof for 2nd time for another 45 mins.
9. Steam on high heat for 12 mins. Done!

Steamed Pumpkin Buns

I had seen these bright orangey steamed buns from Wendy of Table of 2 and bookmarked the recipe sometime ago. I had actually forgotten about it until I saw this recipe again shared by  Lena  in her blog Frozen Wings. I knew then that I had to try out the recipe at last, lest I forget again.  Just like how Lena decribed them, they were indeed soft & fluffy and sweet, wonderful eaten just plain without any fillings. Somehow mine were not as bright orange as Wendy's or Lena's but it didn't really matter, they were really good and I just couldn't have enough of these.  As with all steamed buns, they were best eaten warm. A keeper recipe, this.

I am submitting this entry to 'Aspiring Bakers #8 - Bread Seduction' hosted by sweet Jasmine of  'The Sweetylicious' (Details here).


Steamed Pumpkin Buns
Ingredients
60gm sugar
90gm pumpkin puree
1tsp instant dry yeast
150gm pau flour (or use superfine flour)
1tsp double action baking powder
10gm butter

Method:
1. Combine sugar, pumpkin puree and yeast.
2. Combine pau flour, double action baking powder and butter and mix to form crumbs.
3. Pour (1) into (2) and mix to form dough.
4. Knead dough until smooth and no longer sticky.
5. Cover and let dough proof in a warm place until double in size.
6. After proofing, punch down the dough and knead for 2 mins and divide dough into 8 pieces.
7. Take a piece of dough, mould it round then flaten into an oblong. Slowly roll up like swiss roll and put it on a piece of parchment paper. Repeat for the remaining pieces of dough.
8. Cover and let buns proof for 2nd time for another 45 mins.
9. Steam on high heat for 12 mins.