Jiujiang Osmanthus Tea Cake

Ingredients

• 200 g plain flour, for the water dough
• 45 g camellia tea oil or groundnut oil, for the water dough
• 30 g caster sugar, for the water dough
• 75 ml warm water
• 130 g plain flour, for the oil dough
• 65 g camellia tea oil or lard, for the oil dough
• 110 g toasted black sesame seeds
• 80 g caster sugar, for the filling
• 30 g glutinous rice flour, toasted
• 3 tbsp dried osmanthus flowers
• 40 g camellia tea oil, for the filling
• 1 egg yolk
• 2 tbsp white sesame seeds

Before you cook

• Toast the glutinous rice flour in a dry pan over low heat for four minutes until it smells nutty, then cool it.
• Grind the toasted black sesame seeds to a coarse powder in a spice grinder or mortar.
• Line two baking trays with baking paper.
• Beat the egg yolk with a teaspoon of water for glazing.

Steps

1. Rub the two hundred grams of flour with its forty-five grams of oil and the thirty grams of sugar until the mixture looks like damp sand.
2. Pour in the warm water and knead for six minutes until you have a smooth, supple water dough.
3. Cover the water dough and rest it for thirty minutes.
4. Rub the one hundred and thirty grams of flour into its sixty-five grams of oil to make a crumbly oil dough, then press it into a ball.
5. Stir the ground black sesame, eighty grams of sugar, toasted glutinous rice flour, osmanthus flowers and forty grams of oil into a thick, mouldable filling.
6. Roll the filling into eighteen small balls and chill them.
7. Divide the water dough into eighteen pieces and the oil dough into eighteen pieces.
8. Flatten one piece of water dough, sit a piece of oil dough in the middle, and pinch the edges closed.
9. Roll the parcel into a long oval, then roll it up from the short end like a tiny swiss roll.
10. Turn it ninety degrees, roll it out long again, and roll it up a second time to build the layers.
11. Repeat the wrapping and rolling with the remaining pieces, keeping them covered as you go.
12. Heat the oven to one hundred and eighty degrees Celsius.
13. Press each rolled parcel flat, put a sesame ball in the centre, and gather the dough up over it, pinching the seam shut.
14. Set each cake seam side down on the tray and press it into a disc about six centimetres across.
15. Brush the tops with egg yolk and scatter over the white sesame seeds.
16. Bake for twenty-two to twenty-five minutes, until the cakes are deep gold and the layers have visibly separated at the edges.
17. Cool the cakes completely on a rack so the shell crisps, then store them in a tin.