Char sau pau

Today i attempted to make char sau pau, due to a craving ever since alvin mentioned the magic word..

pau.

so i went out, got my ingredients and started preparing, only to realize that my yeast expired in 2009. and yeast, when mixed with water, STINKS. so i wasnt taking any chances with somethign that expired so long ago. had to go out and get a new pack of yeast, only to get home again to find my baking powder ALSO expired in 2009.

fml?

nah, i just used the expired baking powder X)

so after leaving the dough to rise for about 20-30 mins ( i couldnt be bothered to wait longer), this is what it looks like. i swear it doesnt look this yellow, its the light.i substituted oil with butter.
while waiting for the dough to rise, i started making the filling. some boiled pork, flour, char sau sauce, chives, seasame oil, sesame seeds, water chesnut and mushrooms . this actually turned out pretty good for me.
when it comes to cooking, i'm a great multi-tasker. so while all that was going on i was preparing the rice cooker to steam my paus in. the stupid metal grill was slightly too big because of the legs, so i manually bent them in to fit. HA.
Last but not least, i cut up some baking paper as base for the paus. they worked wonderfully, better than the paper used in commercially sold paus.

i am a person who expects to get good results on my first try at anything. this pau attempt barely made it XD

lesson learnt: when the recipe says use oil, dont substitute with butter. i can actually taste the butter in the pau so its quite distracting.

lesson 2: when the recipe calls for half a cup of sugar, use half a cup of sugar and not go 'omg really but thats alot! i shall use less!'

lesson 3: people who made 'how to fold pau' tutorials on youtube probably fold a hundred paus a day. do not expect to be as successful on your first try.

XD as per lesson 3, these are my half-assed attempts at folding a pau.
The recipe i used made 10 paus and some leftover dough enough for at least 3 more, but i ran out of filling.

thankfully for my morale, my husband is very supportive of my cooking along with any self-made attempts (like my nails) and i packed some for him and joco to eat after their gym session today.

in other news, i've finished reading another novel already, and i'm putting off starting another because i have 5 more sets of advent calendar gifts to make for the company. back to work! :D