Following a lovely long-lie, Ryan woke me up the other morning with the smell of these delicious Korean morsels wafting up the stairs. He had been slaving away for a couple of hours making these for breakfast and I have to say - they were delicious! So... we wanted to share the YUM with you all too...
To make these little babies, you want to start with 3/4 cup of warm water. Into this, you stir one tablespoon of a light oil (olive, veg, ground nut etc), 2 tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of salt (few big pinches etc) and one sachet of fast acting yeast. Combine this liquid mix together well...
Now stir in 2 cups of strong bread flour - and, once mixed, you will end up with a very sticky dough. With very well floured hands, bring the dough to a ball in the bowl... put cling film over it, and leave to rise at room temp for an hour to an hour and a half until it looks bubbly and has approx doubled in size!
When you return to the dough after it's hour or so, knock the air out of it - it will be too sticky to use your hands so use a knife or a spoon to do this, and then roughly pull the dough back into ball and leave for another half hour.
In that half hour, make your filling!!
The filling will do 2 batches of dough, so keep the rest in a bowl or tupperware for the next time you make them (we kept ours for 3 days, and it was fine!). Combine 2/3 cup brown sugar, half a cup of ground almonds, half a cup of sultanas and a teaspoon of mixed spice... mix well together until you have a sandy, sweet, crumbly mixture.
When your half hour is up, and with very well floured hands and surface (we cannot stress this enough - keep flouring your hands through this process!) dump out the dough onto your surface: cut or break it into 14 - 18 pieces... flatten and form each wee ball into a rough thin circle-like pancake in the palm of your hand, then, in the centre of this wee pancake, put a teaspoon or so of your filling. Now work to pull the edges of your dough up around the filling like a pouch, sealing and twisting your bundle together to trap the filling safely inside the dough-ball.
Set aside each one until you have worked through the batch on a FLOURED surface ;)
Heat a frying pan to medium and put about tablespoon of the same flavourless oil in to heat. Watching them carefully, and in small batches of about 3-5 depending on your frying pans' size, fry each patty on the first side for about 2-3 minutes and until golden brown. Now, flip them over and squish them down with your spatula to make them more like pancakes again as they will have risen to something more like a little dumpling shape with the heat... (you want them flatter, like a tea-cake)... turn your pan down once you have flipped them (turning up again for the first side of each batch you cook), put a lid on the pan and fry for another 2-3 minutes until equally golden on the other side.
As you are cooking in small batches, and want to keep them soft and steamy, place them on a plate with a tea-towel over them to keep the heat in...
Serve warm and enjoy!!
p.s. you can also try a savory filling like mozzarella or tuna and sweetcorn - so you would want to reduce the sugar in the dough right down at the start! We're also going to try marzipan as a filling next as we think it would be tres tasty indeed... :) You can try anything you like inside...
p.p.s. We love that these are dairy-free for those who are Lactose Intolerant and are thinking of trying them with Rice Flour to see if they would work well Gluten-free too! :)
Have fun!!
Abigail & Ryan
