Costco Mango Buns
Here’s my first confession: I don’t like hot cross buns.
My second: I am obsessed with Costco.
The recipe
Yield: 12 buns
Ingredients
Tangzhong:
3 tbsp (40g) flour
½ cup whole milk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Dough:
¼ cup (57g) mango or peach juice/nectar
160g dried mango pieces
540g bread flour
1 ¾ tsp (10g) salt
12g instant yeast
¾ cup (170g) milk, room temperature
2 large eggs, plus 1 egg yolk, at room temperature (save the white for brushing)
6 tbsp (85g) butter, at room temperature (it can be salted or unsalted)
¼ cup (53g) light brown sugar, packed
Brushing:
1 large egg white, reserved from above
1 tbsp milk
Crème pâtissière
Instructions
1. Grease a 9" x 13" pan with butter, shortening, or cooking spray.
2. Make the tangzhong: combine the flour, milk, and vanilla extract in a small pot. Whisk well to combine until the mixture is uniform. Place the pot over medium heat and cook, whisking constantly, until the mixture becomes very thick, thicker than pudding. Remove from the heat and place in a bowl, loosely covered, until it cools to room temperature.
3. Chop up the dried mango slices into small pieces, about ½ inch large. Place them in a microwave-safe bowl. Pour in the peach or mango juice and stir the fruit to coat. Cover, making sure there is a space for steam to escape, and microwave for about one minute or until the fruit and juice are steaming and the fruit has begun to absorb the juice. Set aside to cool to room temperature.
4. Make the dough by adding the flour and the cooled tangzhong to the bowl of a stand mixer outfitted with the dough hook attachment. Add the salt to one side of the bowl and the yeast to the other side. Add the rest of the ingredients: milk, eggs and yolk, butter, and brown sugar. With a dough hook, knead the dough on low speed until all the ingredients are incorporated, scraping down the sides of the bowl if necessary. Increase the speed to medium or high and continue kneading until the dough is smooth, shiny, and elastic, though it will remain fairly sticky and will not pull away from the sides of the bowl. Mix in the mango and juice until the mango pieces are evenly distributed.
5. Grease your hands and transfer the dough to a bowl and cover it. Let it rise in a warm place for 1-2 hours (I baked my buns in the winter and they needed close to two hours.) It should be noticeably puffy and larger in size, though it does not need to be doubled.
6. Lightly oil your hands if necessary to keep the dough from sticking. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured work surface. Throughout this step, handle the dough gently and try not to entirely deflate it. Divide the dough into 12 pieces. Form them into balls by pinching the edges together at the bottom, then dragging the dough gently across a work surface to seal the bottom edge. Place them in the greased pan.
7. Cover the pan with plastic wrap and let the buns rise for 1 to 2 hours. They should again be noticeably bigger in size and touching, but not necessarily doubled. While the dough is rising, preheat the oven to 375°F.
8. Whisk together the reserved egg white and milk and brush it on the tops of the buns.
9. Bake the buns for 20-30 minutes, until they’re a deep golden brown. Cool in the pan or on a wire rack. Store them covered at room temperature or in the fridge for a few days.
10. When the buns are still a little warm, cut one open, spoon in some crème pat, and enjoy!
Notes and tips
I got my mango nectar and my dried mango from Costco. If you do not have a Costco membership, Goya brand peach nectar is a great substitute for mango nectar! It also has the bonus of coming in a smaller carton, if you consider that a bonus.
I use Fleishmann’s Bread Machine Instant Yeast. It comes in a little yellow and blue jar. It’s great because you don’t have to proof it before you bake with it, and I find it nicer than packets because different recipes call for different amounts of yeast.
For my crème patissiere, I used Paul Hollywood’s recipe in How to Bake. It’s this recipe, doubled, but at the end, I added some salt to taste. It doesn’t need much, but a little salt greatly improves the flavor. You can also add a few tablespoons of butter as well, stirred into the hot finished product before cooling it in the fridge.
Tangzhong is a Japanese technique of cooking flour and milk on the stove until they make a paste, and then adding that paste to your bread dough. It’s a weird little trick, but the bread is a lot softer and stays fresh on the counter much longer than without it. I hate stale bread, and you should, too.
Your dough ingredients should be at room temperature because if they’re cooler, they could slow down what is an already slow rising process for the yeast. Help the little guys out by popping your cold milk in the microwave for a little bit! If your tangzhong or fruit are too hot, they could kill the yeast.
The salt goes on one side of the bowl and the yeast goes on the other when mixing the dough because direct contact with the salt could kill the yeast. Thanks for the tip, Paul Hollywood!
Enriched doughs (doughs with added sugar, eggs, and fats like butter and milk) rise more slowly and less dramatically than simple doughs of flour, salt, water, and yeast. So don’t be surprised if your buns aren’t doubled in size either time they rise; this is normal!
On the second day, the buns will taste a little stale. Remedy this by popping them in a 375°F oven for a few minutes or with a few seconds in the microwave. Cut the warm bun in half, fill with crème pat, and it will taste almost as good as when it first came out of the oven.
The story
This recipe came together in two parts. First, I tried making hot cross buns for Easter a few years ago, and I followed Paul Hollywood’s recipe. (Paul taught me all I know about bread, so he comes up a lot today.) I did everything right. I added apples to the dough to make it moist (genius!), I left out the raisins (disgusting!), and substituted dried berries instead (delicious!). But Paul let me down—the buns came out of oven and were just okay. So I made some crème pâtissière, put that and jam or lemon curd in the middle of the buns (a great improvement!), and proceeded to eat them for breakfast for a week until they were gone.
The second part is my deep and abiding love of Costco. It is a running joke in my family that every time I say, “Guess where I got this!” the answer is “Costco!” To set the record straight, Costco is not the only reason that one of the first purchases my husband and I made for our new house was a chest freezer for the basement. (Guess where I got it!) So when I looked around my kitchen, thinking about a better fruit-filled bun, my mind naturally went to the enormous bag of dried mangoes from Costco my husband and I love but were struggling to eat. And I thought about the enormous jug of mango nectar, also from Costco, that we were struggling to drink.
The only thing I kept from that first attempt at hot cross buns is the dried fruit, the shape, and the crème pat.
And if you were looking for an excuse to get yourself a Costco membership, you now have one. You’re welcome.
Spread the love
If you like this recipe, please recommend Confessions of a Cake Snob to someone you know! Also feel free to share this newsletter with a friend, comment on the website, or bake it and let me know how it went for you! Email me with comments, things you’d like to see, and suggestions at confessionsofacakesnob@substack.com. I’m excited to hear from you!