Steamed Pork & Cabbage Bao 菜肉包

Been thinking of trying out some bao for very long time, it was quite a last minute when I decided to make these bao yesterday. We decided to start doing it only at around 4pm, I handled the bao dough kneading part whereas mum fried the pork, mushrooms and cabbage fillings.

I got the recipe from a vegetarian cookbook I bought sometimes ago, mum modified the filling as we preferred having some meat yesterday :p

I didn't hand kneaded the dough, threw all the ingredients into the mixer to complete the job. The dough looked very rough at the beginning, I added about 60ml more water into the dough, after kneading for another 10 minutes, it turned soft.

Folding the fillings into the dough was a tough job, most of the time I just couldn't close up the opening properly and the juice/sauce kept flowing thru the opening as I pressed more, sigh... tough!

Sis handled the steaming part, she put in the 1st batch, when it was time to off the fire & opened the lid of the wok, she gave a loud scream, when I rushed out to see what happened, the baos were all almost doubling their size!

B4 stuffing the bao into my mouth, I remembered Ohbin (Nicole Lee) mentioned that u may call the bao successful unless u able to peel the skin, so here u can see, I able to peel the skin nicely, oh ho... I'm smiling from ear to ear...

I tell u, those fillings were so delicious! As for the bao, I would say it tasted good while it was still hot/warm, as it was Q, don get me wrong, they were not hard, just dense, but the bau didn't stick to teeth while savoring it, so still consider a slight success.

Mum said with a little extra water, the dough will be perfect, I think I will rather try out Carol's recipes (this or this) next time.

Made 2 bunnies with cheese filling for little girl, she & the cousin (SKY) colored the eyes & nose, yeah, it was a mess. She said they were delicious and wanna me to make again :)