Steamed buns with semi-dried apple

At the beginning of May, I met my friends in Tokyo and had a very good time. Before we went back home, one of them kindly gave me a vegan present. It was a pack of semi-dried apple she had bought on her trip to Gunma Prefecture.

Though I like dried fruits such as raisin, prunes, and berries, I had never eaten semi-dried apple before. But somehow, I was sure that it would taste delicious when used for steamed buns. On the Internet, you can find many recipes using wheat flour or rice flour (gluten-free). It was interesting to find that steamed buns are often made for weaning food, and some of the recipes are intended for children allergic to eggs and dairy products. This time, I used about 150cc of soymilk, 100g of rice flour, a teaspoon of baking powder, and a banana in addition to the dried apple.

The recipe is simple;
1. Mix the soymilk and the banana in the blender.
2. Mix the above into the rice flour, add the baking powder, and mix well.
3. Pour the paste into molds and steam for 15 minutes with diced apple on top.

When the paste was ready, I found it was too much to steam at a time in my small steamer. So, I used just three molds of paste for buns and made a pancake with the remaining paste. I didn’t add semi-dried apple to the pancake. It was good as it was, but I thought it might have better to eat with peanut butter.

These are buns taken out from the steamer after 15 minutes.

The inside looked like this.

It seemed that buns had been steamed sufficiently as they were spongy. This was the first time I had made steamed buns, and I was quite satisfied with them. Since the semi-dried apple was sugared, I didn’t need to add sugar. The buns tasted moderately sweet with the apple and the banana. Semi-dried apple can be used also for cookies, muffins, pancakes, etc. and all of them can be made from rice flour instead of wheat flour. The rice flour I used seemed to be intended to make such sweets because it has some recipes written on the pack. I’m wondering what to make next time.