Recipe: Chrysanthemum Pastries for Stacey

CHRYSANTHEMUM PASTRIES

Water dough (@30g each):
100g High protein flour, non-sifted
50g superfine/cake flour, sifted
20g icing sugar, sifted
60g shortening
70g water

Oil dough (@22g each):
150g superfine/cake flour, sifted
80g shortening

Filling:
250g red bean or lotus paste
Glazed cherries for decoration

Refer to Chinese Pastry Dough for the preparation of pastry skin. You should be getting 10 no. of pastries (Pic 1).

Divide red bean or lotus paste into 10 portions. Form each portion into a ball.

Roll out a pastry skin prepared in Step 1. Place a red bean paste onto it and wrap (Pic. 2). Seal the edges properly.

With sealed edges down, press the pastry lightly to flatten it (Pic. 3).

Using a cutter, cut the pastry as shown in Pic 4. Avoid cutting into the centre of the pastry.

Turn every cutting edge over so that the red bean paste faces up (Pic. 5). Arrange the "petals" neatly to get a Chrysanthemum-like pastry. Place half of a glazed cherry at the centre of the pastry (Pic. 6).

Brush egg wash (1 egg, light beaten and strained) on each pastry.

Bake in a preheated oven at 200 deg C for 30 minutes. Brush egg wash on the pastries as soon as the pastries are taken out form the oven.

When done, cool them on a wire rack.

NOTES:

Avoid pouring all water specified in water dough at one time. As the adsorption nature of flours varies, you may need to adjust the amount of water specified here.

Do not over-mix the oil dough as this will result in firm, rather than crispy and puffy, pastry skin.

Avoid pressing while rolling out the dough in Step 5. This may cause the oil dough wrapped inside the water dough to leak out. You may not get nice and consistent pastry skin if this happens.

Always make sure the consistency/softness of both water and oil dough are about the same.

CHINESE PASTRY SKIN

Water dough:
60g high protein flour, non-sifted
25g high ratio flour, sifted
15g icing sugar
25g shortening
45ml water

Oil dough:
75g high ratio flour, sifted
45g shortening

To prepare water dough: Mix the flours, icing sugar and shortening in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle of the dry ingredients and gradually pour in the water. Mix well and lightly knead for about 2 minutes until a non-sticky dough is formed. Leave the dough aside and go on to prepare oil dough.

To prepare oil dough: Mix both ingredients together. Do not knead this dough.

Divide water and oil dough in 8 portions (Pic. 2). Each water dough portion should weigh 20g while each oil dough should weigh 14g.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out a water dough. Wrap an oil dough with this water dough (Pic. 3) to form a ball.

Use a rolling pin to roll out the dough in (4) as shown in Pic. 4. Roll as swiss-roll (Pic. 5). Give the dough a quarter turn and roll out the dough length wise again. Roll as swiss-roll (Pic. 6).

Repeat the same procedure for the remaining water and oil doughs. These pastry skins are ready to be used.

NOTES:

Avoid pouring all water specified in water dough at one time. As the adsorption nature of flours varies, you may need to adjust the amount of water specified here.

Do not over-mix the oil dough in Step 2 as this will result in firm, rather than crispy and puffy, pastry skin.

Avoid pressing while rolling out the dough in Step 5. This may cause the oil dough wrapped inside the water dough to leak out. You may not get nice and consistent pastry skin if this happens.

Always make sure the consistency/softness of both water and oil dough are about the same.