Old Beijing Red Bean Milk Rolls Recipe (老北京豆沙奶卷 Lǎo Běijīng Dòushā Nǎi Juǎn )

Old Beijing red bean milk rolls are an ancient Chinese dessert that were enjoyed by the imperial family around the Qing dynasty.

Similarly to Beijing palace cheese, old Beijing red bean milk rolls (老北京宫廷豆沙奶卷 lǎo Běijīng gōngtíng dòushā nǎi juǎn) are made by curdling milk with sweet fermented rice wine. But, unlike Beijing palace cheese, the mixture is broken up into smaller curds and then strained so that only the solid curds remain, which are then kneaded into an almost cheesecake-like mixture, and rolled up with sweet red bean paste.

One thing I saw in common with most recipes online is that most of them involve cooking down the milk for some time before adding the fermented rice wine, so you have a slightly more condensed milk. This is so you get more curds when you add the wine. But I decided to cheat and add whole milk powder to fresh milk to make instant semi-condensed milk, so I didn't have to stand there over the stove stirring for half an hour.

I also cheated a little when curdling the milk and ended up adding lemon juice, which surprisingly didn't alter the mild sweet rice wine flavour. For some reason the milk did curdle but not fully so, which kept happening after several attempts– and I think this is down to the fact that I was using very freshly fermented rice (I make my own sweet fermented rice wine).

For past successful experiments, I was using either shop-bought or quite matured homemade stuff with the same ingredients but the quantities scaled down, so perhaps mine wasn't strong enough this time. In any case, the lemon's optional – only use it if, after adding the fermented rice wine, the whey hasn't turned clear (which means there are still some milk solids left to be curdled). But if you're using shop-bought sweet fermented rice, the chances are it'll work first time for you.

You can also watch me make this on my YouTube channel, Tashcakes:

Ready? Let's go.

Ingredients:

1,500ml whole (full fat) milk
100g whole milk powder (I use Nido)
400ml fermented rice wine (squeezed from sweet fermented glutinous rice)
Juice of 1 lemon (if necessary, see method)
300g red bean paste

Method:

1. In a saucepan over a medium heat, stir the milk and milk powder together until dissolved.

2. Turn the heat up a little, until the milk is steaming and just about starting to simmer.

3. Turn the heat to low and stir in the fermented rice wine, stirring for about five minutes until the mixture has fully curdled.

4. Pour into a sieve lined with a clean muslin cloth over a bowl, gather up the muslin and gently squeeze to get rid of the whey. Dump out the curds into a bowl.

5. If the whey is clear- at this point, move onto the next step. But if it's still milky, add it back to the pan on a medium heat and add the juice of one lemon, stirring until more curds form and the whey is clear and a little yellowish. Discard the whey (or save it to use for other recipes).

6. Pop all of the solid curds into a blender and blitz for a few seconds until smooth.

7. Spoon the curds into a medium-sized plastic sandwich bag and roll it out into a rectangle. Pop it in the fridge to firm up for about an hour.

8. Put the red bean paste into a second sandwich bag of the same size, and roll out so it's about 2cm shorter in length than your curd sheet.

9. Cut down the middle of both bags to open them up, and transfer the curd sheet onto a bigger plastic sandwich bag (to give you room for rolling it up. Then carefully place the red bean sheet on top of your curd sheet. Discard the 'red bean bag', and use the 'curd bag' to roll everything up like a swiss roll, working towards the end of the curd sheet that doesn't have any red bean paste on top.

10. Wrap up your log in the sandwich bag, sealing with a layer of clingfilm, and chill in the fridge for at least an hour.

11. When you're ready to serve, use a length of unflavored dental floss to neatly slice through the log to create fat discs. Serve while still chilled.

Enjoy. and have fun.