Samoan Pani Popo
Soft yeasted buns baked in a sweet coconut cream sauce until the cream has soaked in and the tops are glossy and golden.
Photograph credit: Pani Popo by Mely Presto Johnson · CC BY-SA 2.0 · Flickr · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
The Method for Samoan Pani Popo
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Mix the flour, yeast, 50 g sugar and salt. Add the butter, egg and warm milk and knead for 10 minutes into a soft, smooth dough.
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Cover and leave in a warm place for 60 minutes until doubled in size.
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Heat the oven to 180°C / 355°F. Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll each into a ball. Pack them into a greased 30 x 20 cm baking dish.
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Whisk the coconut cream with 80 g sugar until dissolved and pour over the buns. Bake for 25 minutes until deep golden. Serve warm.
What Can Go Wrong
- Warm the milk to blood heat only; hot milk kills the yeast.
- Pack the buns closely so they rise upwards.
- If the tops brown too quickly, cover loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.
The Short Version
Pour the sauce over before the buns go in the oven, not after. Pani popo are baked sitting in a sweetened coconut cream, and the buns drink it up as they cook, which turns the bottoms soft and custardy and keeps the tops glossy.
The dough is an ordinary enriched dough, with flour, yeast, sugar, butter, milk and an egg, kneaded until smooth and left to double in size. It should feel soft and slightly tacky. Shaped into 12 balls, the buns are tightly packed in the dish so they rise upwards and into each other.
The sauce is just coconut cream and sugar, whisked until the sugar dissolves. Bake until deep golden, with the cream bubbling around the edges. Eat the buns warm, pulling them apart and spooning up the sauce left in the dish. Leave a gap between the dough and the rim of the dish, because the buns will puff up and swell as they absorb the sauce.
To Go With It
Hot tea · Fresh pineapple · Papaya · Black coffee
Storing Leftovers
Best eaten warm on the day. Keeps for 2 days and reheats in a low oven.
Questions People Ask
How long does Samoan Pani Popo take to make?
25 minutes of preparation and 25 minutes of cooking, plus 1 hour of Proving the dough, so allow 1 hour 50 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 12.
Samoan Pani Popo Nutrition Facts
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked.
First published ; last changed .
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