Pineapple bun with butter

Ingredientsserves 1

Method

1. Buy the pineapple bun from a bakery; keep the block of butter in the fridge and cut it only when needed. This page cooks only the butter; the bun belongs to the bakery.
2. Reheat the bun: five minutes in the oven at 180°C, or thirty seconds in a microwave. The oven brings the topping back to a crackle; the microwave leaves it soft.
3. Cut a slab of butter about 1 cm thick, cold.
4. Split the hot bun across, not all the way through; put in the cold butter and close it.
5. Eat while the butter is half-melted. That moment, hot bun and cold butter, is the 冰火菠蘿油, and it does not survive a takeaway box.
6. The café has a bakery at the back that pulls buns at three o'clock for the afternoon-tea rush, and the butter is a thick slab from a catering block; at home the bun comes from a Chinese bakery and the butter is whatever is in the fridge.

Take care

• Contains wheat, egg and milk (the bun and the butter).

The story

The pineapple bun has nothing to do with pineapple: its topping cracks in the oven into a diamond pattern that looked like the fruit's skin, and the name stuck in the 1950s 冰室 bakeries. 菠蘿油, the bun split with a cold slab of butter, is the afternoon-tea order Hong Kong people abroad describe most wistfully, because the bun exists wherever there is a Chinese bakery but the exact butter-melting moment does not survive a takeaway box.

Same counter

Hong Kong French toastCondensed-milk and butter toastCafé scrambled eggs on toast

Lo Fo Tong is cultural food-heritage reference, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, unwell or on medication, talk to your doctor or registered practitioner before changing what is in the pot.