Melon Pan is a recipe I’ve always wanted to make and eat. And of course this recipe fits in very well on AVO Blog! I hope it’s very similar to the Melon Pan they sell in Japan, but I can’t be sure of this because I’ve never eaten it, except for when I made it myself. As a collaboration between AVO Blog and MuchMunchies I love to share recipes with a Japanese side to them, but these are not my only recipes.
Difficulty Level: ✩
This is based on the short preparation time (not including the waiting time in between) and the simple steps.
What you’ll need:
♡ Big mixing bowl (at least 1)
♡ Electric Mixer + Dough hooks
♡ Silicone Spatula (at least 1)
♡ Rolling pin
♡ Knife or Dough scraper
♡ Boiling Pot
♡ Clingfilm
♡ Baking paper
♡ Towel
♡ Optional: Balloon Whisk
Ingredients:
♡ Vanilla Cookie Dough (if you want to make all 8 of them with this dough then double the ingredients and you won’t need the ingredients for the chocolate cookie dough)
- 40 grams of butter*
- 25 grams of sugar
- half an egg*
- half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 100 grams of flower
♡ Chocolate Cookie Dough (if you want to make all 8 of them with this dough then double the ingredients and you won’t need the ingredients for the chocolate cookie dough)
- 40 grams of butter*
- 25 grams of sugar
- half an egg*
- half a teaspoon of vanilla extract
- 80 grams of flower
- 20 grams of cocoa powder
- Optional: Instead of 80 grams of flower and 20 grams of cocoa powder: 90 grams of flower and 10 grams of cocoa powder, to taste
- extra flower
- extra sugar (about 100 grams is plenty)
♡ Bread dough
- 200 grams of milk
- 30 grams of butter
- 300 grams of flower
- 7 grams of instant yeast
- 30 grams of sugar
- Optional: 6 grams of chocolate per piece of bread (you can pick whatever kind of chocolate you want)**
- Optional: Small chocolate sprinkles or pieces (you can pick whatever kind of chocolate you want)
* These ingredients have to be at room temperature.
** 6 grams of chocolate was one little block off of a 200 grams dark chocolate bar, for me. You can decide to use more or less chocolate, however much you prefer.
Method
TIPS: You could mix the chocolate pieces through the cookie dough, but then it’ll be harder to roll it out. I used small chocolate sprinkles. After rolling out the cookie dough you can place these on the cookie dough and roll over it one more time.
Scrape the sides of the bowl well in between with the silicone spatula, during steps 1 through 3, so everything gets incorporated well.
♡ Step 1: You’ll start off making the vanilla cookie dough. Put the butter and sugar, meant for this dough, in a mixing bowl and mix this with well the electric mixer.
♡ Step 2: After this add the egg and vanilla extract. Mix this through well with the electric mixer.
♡ Step 3: Now add the flower and mix this through well again with the electric mixer.
♡ Step 4: After this you take the dough out of the bowl and place it on some clingfilm. Use the clingfilm to shape it into a cylinder. Put the dough in the refrigerator afterwards, let it cool in there for at least 30 minutes.
♡ Step 5: Repeat steps 1 through 4 for the chocolate dough, at step three you’ll have to add the flower and the cocoa powder.
♡ Step 6: Now you’ll start making the bread dough. Put the butter and milk in a boiling pot and heat it on the stove until the butter has melted. Leave it to cool for 15 minutes afterwards, so it’s not piping hot but still warm.
♡ Step 7: Put the flower, sugar and yeast in a large mixing bowl. Mix this through well with a silicone spatula or, if you prefer, a balloon whisk. Create a hole in the middle after mixing well.
♡ Step 8: Add the milk and melted butter mixture to the bowl. Mix this through well with a silicone spatula.
♡ Step 9: Cover the bowl with clingfilm and put a towel over it, to keep it warm. Let the dough rise for 1 hour.
♡ Step 10: In the meantime divide both cookie doughs into 4 equal pieces each, you can use a kitchen scale for this. My cookie doughs weighed 186 grams each, with the help of my kitchen scale I divided each dough into four equal portions. Roll the, in total 8, pieces of cookie dough into balls.
♡ Step 11: Put each ball on their own piece of baking paper and roll each ball out into a flat circle with a diameter of 12 centimetres. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin, on which you’ve rubbed a little bit of flower. After rolling out the dough you can put some chocolate sprinkles or pieces on it and roll over it once more.
♡ Step 12: Put the rolled out dough circles on a plate, on top of each other with the baking paper in between. If you’d prefer you can put the dough back in the fridge for a little while, if you cover the plates with clingfilm. If you do put it back in the fridge then take the cookie dough out 10 minutes before you start working with the bread dough, so it can soften a little again.
♡ Step 13: Take the bread dough out of the bowl with a silicone spatula, once it has gotten twice as big as before, this takes about an hour. Deflate the dough well.
TIP: At the next step you can make sure your knife or dough scraper, whichever you prefer to use to divide the dough, doesn’t stick by dipping this in some flower. If the dough is sticky then use a little bit of flower, for instance by only putting a little on your fingertips. It’s not a very sticky dough and if you use too much flower it will quickly become too dry.
♡ Step 14: Divide the bread dough into 8 equal pieces, in total my bread dough weighed 550 gram, that’s 68 grams per piece of bread. Shape these into balls afterwards. If you want to put chocolate into the bread dough then you can do this first and then shape the dough into a ball.
♡ Step 15: Cover each ball of dough with a circle of cookie dough, shape this well around the ball of dough.
TIP: As you can see later on my cookie dough broke apart a bit during the rising process, make sure not to make the impressions in your dough too deep if you want to prevent this. Or you could not make any indents at all, whichever you prefer.
♡ Step 16: Create the indents that Melon Pan usually have with a knife or dough scraper. Roll the melon pan through some sugar afterwards and place it on a baking tray covered with baking paper. Make sure that there’s plenty of room between the Melon Pan, they will still get bigger.
♡ Step 17: Let the Melon Pan rise for 1 more hour, in a warm place. Meanwhile preheat your over to 200 degrees Celsius.
♡ Step 18: Bake the Melon Pan for 12 minutes on 200 degrees Celsius, after they’ve doubled in size during their hour of rising. Every oven is different, to make sure your Melon Pan are done check whether there’s a little golden brown colour on the vanilla variety.
TIP: Once they’ve cooled you can put them in individual sandwich bags, and eat them within a few days, so they don’t dry out.
♡ Enjoy!
Of course I’ve already tested this recipe before, I have to say I’m happy with the result. I really enjoyed the flavour of the bread, I don’t usually like sweet bread and luckily this bread isn’t super sweet. It’s also very nice and fluffy. The cookie dough adds a delicious crunchy layer to it. The Melon Pan with vanilla cookie dough, chocolate pieces on it and chocolate in the middle was my favourite. These Melon Pan are delicious warm as well as cooled off!
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