Changsha Sugar Oil Baba

Ingredients

• 250 g glutinous rice flour
• 180 ml just-boiled water
• 120 g Chinese brown sugar slab or dark muscovado
• 150 ml cold water
• 4 tbsp groundnut oil
• 1 tbsp toasted white sesame seeds
• 1 tsp dried osmanthus flowers, optional

Before you cook

• Weigh the glutinous rice flour into a wide bowl.
• Chop the brown sugar slab into small pieces so it dissolves quickly.
• Line a tray with baking paper for the shaped cakes.

Steps

1. Pour the just-boiled water into the rice flour in a thin stream, stirring with chopsticks as you go.
2. Once the mixture is cool enough to touch, knead it in the bowl for three minutes until you have a smooth, soft dough with the feel of an earlobe.
3. Pinch off pieces of about thirty grams and roll each into a ball.
4. Press each ball flat between your palms into a disc roughly five centimetres across and one centimetre thick.
5. Make a shallow dimple in the centre of each disc with your thumb so it cooks through evenly.
6. Heat the oil in a wide frying pan over a medium flame.
7. Lay in the discs in a single layer, leaving room between them.
8. Fry for three minutes, until the undersides are pale gold and lightly crisp.
9. Turn each cake and fry the second side for another three minutes.
10. Scatter the chopped brown sugar into the pan around the cakes.
11. Pour in the cold water and let it come to a boil.
12. Simmer for six to eight minutes, tilting and swirling the pan, until the syrup thickens and starts to coat the cakes in a shiny brown glaze.
13. Turn the cakes over in the syrup so both sides are lacquered.
14. Lift them onto a plate, pour over any syrup left in the pan, and scatter with sesame seeds and osmanthus.
15. Eat them hot, so the outside is still chewy and the middle molten.