traveling to hong kong with a sweet tooth
For my first trip to Hong Kong, I was expecting to eat really well. I envisioned lots of dim sum, stir fry, spicy noodles, tasty meats and fish.
What I wasn’t expecting was how much of my food experience would be devoted to sweets. Turns out, Hong Kong has a bit of a sweet tooth. Which works out well because so do I.
Hong Kong Style French Toast
This dessert blew my mind. It’s not refined or delicate. In fact, it’s the kind of thing a kid might create if you taught him how to bake and then left him in a kitchen without supervision. But it’s so damn good.
Basically, this dish is two thick slices of white bread with crunchy peanut butter spread on one side. The bread is then coated in eggs and fried in butter. Once fried golden brown and crispy on the outside, the bread is put together like a sandwich with the peanut butter inside. A big slab of butter is placed on top, and then copious amounts of condensed milk and honey or maple syrup is poured over the whole thing.
Debaucherous? Yes. Delicious? Absolutely.
Tip: If you’re sharing the dish, cut the toast into 9 squares to share, and then grab up that middle one first. That’s the one with the most milk, honey, butter, and peanut butter goodness.
Coconut Buns
Although the French Toast is the most showy of the Hong Kong traditional sweets that I tried, the coconut bun might be my favorite. It’s much less intense, and is something I could see myself wanting for a treat on a regular basis. As soon as I got home, in fact, I started looking for a good recipe to make these at home.
The bun is a soft, slightly sweet bread, sprinkled with sesame seeds on top — very typical of a lot of Asian sweet breads. Where this bun really sets itself apart is the filling. It’s stuffed with a slighty gritty, nutty paste of dessicated coconut and sugar that’s delightfully sweet and a pleasing texture in the midst of the fluffy bread.
For fans of coconut flavor, this is a must try.
Pineapple Bun
Closely related to the coconut bun is the pineapple bun. It’s like the coconut bun’s less interesting sibling.
The most disappointing thing about the pineapple bun is that, unlike the coconut bun (which gets its name from the coconut filling), the pineapple bun has no pineapple flavor or filling. It’s named for the checkered pattern on the top of the bun that looks like the outside of a pineapple. I feel misled.
But, for a sweet bread and a not-overly-decadent dessert, the pineapple bun is a great option. The main bulk of the bun is very similar in texture and taste to the bread of the coconut bun — slightly sweet, soft, and fluffy. The pineapple top is a little crunchier and sweetier. It doesn’t slap you in the face with sweetness, but gives you a subtle, pleasing sugar fix.
For anyone who’s tried Japan’s melon pan, this is a very similar treat.
Egg Waffles
These sweets are ubiquitous on the streets of Hong Kong. They’re kind of like inverted waffles. They come in a circular waffle-like sheet, but instead of indented grids, they have puffed-out grids.
The waffle itself is made out of a very egg-y batter, and is cooked in a griddle until it gets nice and crispy on the outside and light and airy on the inside.
If you get the original (plain) waffle, it’s actually only slightly sweet with a pretty recognizable egg bread taste. However, they also serve up other flavors, including chocolate, banana, and green tea and offer the waffles covered with sweet sauces or ice cream for an extra kick of dessert.
I only tried the plain waffles and enjoyed the low-key sweetness. They were also a great eat-and-walk dessert, perfect for an afternoon of shopping Mong Kok’s stalls.
Those were the sweets I tried while in Hong Kong. I was delighted with all of them, although I felt guilty for trying all of them (multiple times) in just four days.
For anyone taking a trip to Hong Kong, I would highly suggest finding time (and room in your stomach) for at least the coconut bun and the French Toast. You’ll never look at bread the same again.
