Comfort conundrum-/Brown butter chocolate chip cookie buns

Food is so often synonymous with emotions in our culture. That is all well and good (believe me I find comfort in eating massive amounts of bread or in the cup of brewed strong coffee); however I am bit perplexed at the negative synonyms that come with eating. Isn’t it self-defeating to know that you have to have guilt with a cookie, even though it brings you comfort? I believe this is very harmful to the soul and mind.



Sure media has something to do with it. Think about all the ads you have seen for chocolate. It is almost always a woman, she is often framed as have “sensuous” relationship with chocolate she about to eat and most counter-productive feature is that chocolate is framed as being “wicked” or “secretive”. Also, I am not even going into the ice cream ads because they alluding to mature content….



I think Poland talked about this in his book, where Americans associated chocolate cake with guilt and French people associated with celebration? This shows the importance of culture in the emotional regulation. I am not going to pretend that I am this strong force against culture and so confident in myself that I can voice these views. In reality I am not. I have struggled with this emotion/ food dynamic for most of my adult/teenage life; I think is impossible not to with all the focus on image and eating. Even today the creator of a dessert, bread/carb loaded food blog; I still feel the sting of guilt that I am not running with the healthy, vegan, paleo, low fat whatever crowd.



Now I am not bashing the healthy eating crowd because I do understand for moral or health reasons you need to go on these special diets to maintain sanity and good health. However I am a bit mad when any form of media portrays the notion that some food is going to kill you and some food is going to make you superman. Also when people tell you in supermarket how the hell can you that (insert food) and stay so skinny/not feel guilt/healthy? Sorry but when did my shopping basket become your business?

First world problems…



On a serious note, whatever happened to the balance ying and yang? Take the good with the bad? Does society need to place everything in a category so we can have some sense of control in our lives like Cher’s makeovers in clueless? I am going to leave you with thought next time you read a food blog, health article or food ad; question the media it is not always right.



These are Japanese inspired sweet bread rolls. I have a thing for Japanese food because it is, as childish as this sounds, so bloody cute! I cannot stand it sometimes. I particularly like Japanese culture because they embrace bread with open arms have such creative creations. For example: Ever had to decide between eating a snack before lunch then making a dent in your appetite or waiting for lunch to come and being ravenous ? What about if you could have a cookie and your bread in one? This is the answer! Cookie bread buns! Brown butter chocolate chip of course!



This brown butter chocolate version is food hack because it traditionally vanilla crust with caster sugar. However while it lacks tradition it still maintains the qualities of good cookie pan; soft as cotton white bread, a sweeten dough perfectly coated in crispy shell. This makes each mouthful a bit of carbo-loaded heaven served as a main or snack you cannot go wrong. This relatively simple to make, the dough is straight mix up dough and the cookie crust uses the creaming method. Also the both sets of dough can be refrigerated until you want to use them; just given them a bit longer to rise because of the cold environment.



NOTE!!: I have been featured on "The answer is cake" for my banana toffee cheese cake. Check it out here! So exciting ^_^

Brown butter chocolate chip cookie buns

Inspired and adapted from Melon pan by Happy Home baking



Bread Dough:

280g bread flour

6g instant yeast

36g caster sugar

5g salt

20g malted milk powder

220g warm full fat milk

45g unsalted butter, soft in 1cm cubes



cookie layer
100g unsalted soft butter

100g pure icing sugar

1 egg

20ml vanilla extract

4g baking powder

80g plain flour

50g corn starch

30g dark eating chocolate chopped finely



Make dough



Place all the ingredients for dough but the butter in large bowl. Mix until forms a rough ball.

Turn out on to an oiled surface and knead for 5 minutes to develop gluten.

After slowly knead in cubes of butter for 20 minutes. Do not worry if it is sticky and messy the bread will absorb the butter. Knead until it is smooth and shiny.

Oil the dough ball and bowl. Cover with cling film and leave for 1-2 hours or until doubled in size.


Make the cookie layer

In small pan, melt butter on low flame until it changes to golden brown and smell nutty. DO NOT LEAVE IT! Watch it like hawk for 5 minutes or so. Pour into a small bowl and fridge till firm.

Once firm cream sugar and butter together until pale golden in colour. Add egg then beat again till fluffy.

Fold in the Flour, starch and baking powder. After fold in chocolate. It should become a firm dough ball. Wrap with cling and chill for 20mintues. Roll the dough out into 40g balls.

With each ball roll, out into a circle shape between cling film. Chill until use.
Punch out the bread dough and divide into 12 portion, about 45g each. Allow to rest uncovered for 5 minutes.

Preheat oven to 180C and line two baking trays with baking paper.

Remove chilled pastry dough from the fridge.

Roll the bread dough again into rounds again. Remove the top layer of the cling wrap and place the bread dough onto the pastry dough. With the bottom layer of the cling wrap still intact, wrap the pastry dough around the bread dough. Carefully remove the bottom layer of the cling wrap, at the same time, smoothing the edges of the pastry dough.

NOTE FROM HHB: DO NOT cover the Entire bread dough with the pastry dough. Leave the bottom 2 ~ 3 cm uncovered. The dough needs the space to expand, otherwise the pastry dough will burst and the resulting appearance will not be very pleasing.

Bake in pre-heated oven at 180C bake for 15minutes.