Coffee Buns (Kopi Roti)
Ultra-soft and fluffy buns, with a crispy top, made up of coffee buttercream.
Growing up in Malaysia, you will see “Papa Roti” almost in every shopping mall. Whenever I passed by “Paparoti”, I could not help but stare at the trays of coffee buns as the smell of coffee buns filling the hallways was simply divine. Also, these buns were only priced at RM3 (£50p equivalent) which were cheap and affordable! I always bought few bags of “Papa Roti” and I cannot imaging myself making them when I was young and little.
Jump to RecipeFast forward to 10 years later, I was craving these coffee buns in London but I could not find them anywhere else. Therefore, after doing researches, I have finally produced one simple recipe to replicate the same one with only a few basic ingredients that could be easily purchased from any grocery store. These buns were easy to make but difficult to resist – they vanished in a blink of an eye and slide through my throat whilst swimming towards my stomach.
They are soft, buttery, airy with a crispy coffee-flavored topping. Check out my recipe below and enjoy having this with a cup of dalgona coffee in the house.
Coffee Buns
Ingredients
Bread
- 20 g Unsalted butter
- 2 tsp Salt
- 100 ml Semi-skimmed milk
- 100 ml Water
- 2 tsp Dried active yeast
- 330 g Flour (all purpose/ bread flour)
- 10 g Cane sugar
Filling
- 50 g Salted butter
Cream
- 70 g All-purpose flour
- 30 g Sugar
- 50 g Unsalted butter
- 1 Large egg
Coffee syrup
- 3 tbsp Instant coffee powder
- 3 tbsp Hot water
Instructions
Bread
- Add 330g all-purpose flour, 2 tsp dried active yeast, 2 tsp salt, 10 g cane sugar, 100ml water, and 100ml semi-skimmed milk into a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly using hand until a dough begins to form.
- Transfer the dough onto a lightly floured surface and begins the hand-kneading process for 10 minutes until the dough gets more elastic and less sticky.
- Then, add 20g unsalted butter to the dough and continues kneading for 10 minutes until the dough is smooth and silky. (Hand kneading refers to – fold the dough, pull it apart, put it back together, bang it against the surface and repeat the whole process again.)
- Place your dough back into a mixing bowl and set aside for proofing purposes for 1 hour for it to rise.
- After 1 hour, transfer the dough onto your work surface and punch it down to remove gas bubbles formed by the yeast.
- Let it rise for another 15 minutes.
- Then, divide the dough into 10 portions and smoothen each one into a round shape.
- Let it rise for another 15 minutes.
- Press the dough to release an additional gas bubble, wrap 5g of salted butter in the dough and repeat for 10 dough balls.
Coffee Cream
- Add 30g sugar, 50g unsalted butter, coffee syrup, and 1 large egg into a mixing bowl and stir thoroughly.
- Sift 70g all-purpose flour on top of the batter (from Step 10) and whisk it until the mixture becomes sticky.
- Pipe the coffee cream in a circular motion from the inner part towards the outer part.
Bake it up
- Bake the coffee buns in an oven preheated to 180 °C for 15 minutes.
- Enjoy and let me know if you like my recipe.