Pandan Chestnut Spiral Buns Recipe

These pandan chestnut spiral buns looks complicated, but they're actually super easy to make.

Spiral buns are often seen in Chinese bakeries with a variety of fillings like black sesame and red bean. The first time I saw someone make them on YouTube was five years ago on Cook Kafemaru's channel when they made purple yam buns. Since then, many other users have made their own videos with either with taro or purple sweet potato, so there are now a lot of purple spiral bun videos out there.

Which is partially why, instead of using the purple sweet potato paste I made a couple of weeks ago and froze, I decided to make something that looks entirely different, and went with pandan and chestnut paste instead.

The chestnut paste is actually white bean paste mixed with a little chestnut, and I found it at my local Chinese supermarket. Any similar thick sweet paste will do though.

You can also see how I make these on my YouTube channel:

Ready? Let's go.

(Makes four buns.)

Ingredients for Bread:

50ml milk
5g fresh or dry active yeast
1 tsp caster sugar
175g bread flour
Pinch of salt
30g more caster sugar
15g unsalted butter, softened
30ml more milk
1 tsp pandan paste
1 egg, beaten

Ingredients for Filling and Topping:

125g chestnut/sweet bean paste
4 roasted, peeled chestnuts

Method:

1. Gently warm the milk in a small pan and mix it with the yeast and 1 tsp sugar, Set aside for a couple of minutes until bubbling.

2. Put the flour, salt, rest of the caster sugar, butter, milk, pandan paste and half of the beaten egg into a bowl, along with the yeast mixture. Set the other half of the beaten egg aside for later to use as a glaze.

3. Stir the ingredients together until they form a dough. Transfer onto a lightly-floured counter and knead for about 15 minutes, until smooth and elastic. Place the dough in a lightly-oiled bowl and cover with clingfilm, and leave to proof until doubled in size (half an hour to an hour).

4. Meanwhile, split the chestnut paste into four portions, roughly rolling into balls.

5. When the dough has doubled in size, punch it back down, transfer onto the counter and split into four equal portions. Roll one out into a wide oval, place a portion of chestnut paste in the centre (shaping the paste into a sausage a little smaller than the bread dough), and close up the dough around it. Re-roll the stuffed dough back out so it's a flat, wide oval again, and cut about six slits lengthways in the middle of the oval, but not cutting all the way from end to end. Now roll the oval up diagonally from one end to the other, stretching lightly so the slits wrap around each other, and curl up into a bun shape. Pop a chestnut in the middle, and repeat with the other three portions of dough and chestnut paste.

6. Place on a baking paper-lined baking tray, cover with clingfilm and leave to proof for another 30 minutes.

7. Preheat the oven to 180°C. Lightly brush the tops of the buns with a little of the remaining beaten egg, and bake for 15 minutes.

8. Leave to cool for a few minutes before eating warm.

Enjoy, and have fun.