老火湯LO FO TONG 中 Sign in

All sweets

Double-skin milk

Double-skin milk

雙皮奶
Steamed custardMilk and eggHot or coldWeekendFor guestsTakes carehands-on 25 min · start to finish 1 hr

“Keep the flame low and the custard stays smooth.”

Ingredientsserves 4

街市Fresh milk· full cream, 3.5% fat or more500 ml
街市Chicken egg (hard-boiled)· whites only, about 100 g3
雜貨舖Sugar40 g

Method

  1. Pour the milk into four small bowls, eight-tenths full, cover with foil and steam ten minutes; or heat the milk in a small pan to just under the boil and pour it into the bowls. Let it cool to hand-warm, and a first skin forms on top. The milk must be full cream: skim and light milk have no fat, so no skin forms and nothing sets.
  2. Hold the skin back with the tip of a knife and pour the milk out of each bowl into a jug, leaving a spoonful under the skin so it stays stuck to the bottom. A torn skin does not matter; the pudding still sets, it is just 單皮奶, single-skin.
  3. Beat the egg whites loosely with the sugar using chopsticks, no foam. The milk must be down to hand-warm before it goes into the whites: milk that is still hot cooks the whites into threads and the pudding never sets. Keep to the sugar given; too much and the whites cannot hold it. Pour the mixture through a sieve. The three yolks go into tomorrow's 燉蛋 or egg tarts.
  4. Pour the mixture gently back into the bowls over the back of a spoon, so the first skin floats up to the top.
  5. Cover the bowls with foil and steam over low heat ten to fifteen minutes, until set with a slight tremble in the centre. Too high a flame honeycombs it. A second skin forms on top, hence the name. A pudding that is nearly set will firm a little more in the fridge; one that is still liquid will not.
  6. Serve warm or chilled; the 順德 shops sell it both ways. Plain, or with a spoon of sweet red bean or a spoon of ginger juice on top.

Take care

  • Contains milk and egg. The whites are cooked through by the steaming.

The story

雙皮奶 is the dish of 大良 in 順德, and the Michelin Guide's piece on 順德 milk cooking tells the standard story of the 董 family shop in the 1850s and the water-buffalo milk that made the skin possible. Hong Kong knows it from the dessert shops of Macau and 順德, and 義順 in Macau is the one every Hong Kong family has queued at. At home it is the show-off dessert, the one where the mum lets the children lift the skin.

Same wall

Steamed egg custard, ginger or milkGinger milk curd

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.