Make your own Taiwanese honey toast box

Top this sweet Taiwanese creation with ice cream, cookies, syrup, and more.

    1 of 7 2 of 7

      Harmony Cheung grew up in Vancouver, and she remembers a time when there were only a handful of restaurants that offered bubble tea in the city. Now the co-owner of Soho Tea Room (3466 Cambie Street), Cheung started hanging out in bubble tea cafés as a teenager. (The Taiwanese beverage mixes black or green tea with milk or blended fruit and tapioca “pearls”.) Back then, these restaurants were primarily popular among Taiwanese and Chinese immigrants, and crowds would gather until late at night.

      “Chinese people are always centralized where the food is,” Cheung told the Georgia Straight during an interview at the Cambie Village restaurant. “Bubble tea is popular because the restaurants provide an environment where you can get together with your friends and just go for bubble tea without having a big meal.”

      Over the years, the number of bubble tea cafés across the Lower Mainland has grown. Cheung’s family owns two of them: Soho Tea Room and Richmond’s Flo Tea Room. They also run a Chinese-Malaysian fusion restaurant called IPOH Asian House.

      Prior to opening restaurants, Cheung’s father cooked at the Four Seasons Hotel Vancouver and her parents owned a meat-supply company. “I just grew up in that kind of environment and was helping out during the weekends when I was going to school,” she recalled.

      Cheung attended UBC and worked as a graphic designer before deciding to go into the family business. She managed Flo in 2008 before the Vancouver restaurant relocated to Richmond, and helped her family open Soho Tea Room two years later. The restaurants have similar menus; in addition to bubble tea, they offer a mix of Taiwanese and Chinese dishes.

      “The Taiwanese dishes include snacks like salt-and-pepper chicken, marinated meats, set meals, hot pot, and bubble tea, of course,” Cheung explained. “The Chinese dishes are Hong Kong–style, like chow mein, rice, and western-influenced cuisine, such as baked pork chops, baked spaghetti, grilled seafood, and steaks.”

      One of Soho’s specialty desserts is a Taiwanese creation called honey toast box, which consists of white-bread toast topped with any combination of ice cream, fruit, cookies, candy, and syrup. Cheung shares a recipe for the sweet, sharable snack below.

      “It’s made with a fluffy white bread that’s super soft. In Chinese, they actually call it a ‘pillow toast’ because it’s foamy and thick,” Cheung said, noting that the bread can be purchased at Asian bakeries and grocery stores.

      The toppings are up to you; Cheung likes vanilla ice cream, thin wafer cookies, sweet cereal, and fresh strawberries on her honey toast box. Since the dessert includes many different flavours and textures, she suggests pairing it with a basic pearl milk tea.

      Harmony Cheung’s Taiwanese honey toast box

      Ingredients

      1 loaf unsliced white bread (rectangular, with squared corners)
      3 Tbsp (45 mL) butter
      2 Tbsp (30 mL) honey
      1 tsp (5 mL) granulated white sugar
      3 scoops ice cream, any flavour
      ¼ cup (60 mL) sliced fruit (such as strawberries, bananas, or stone fruit)
      2 Tbsp (30 mL) dry toppings (such as mini marshmallows, toffee bits, sprinkles, or cereal)
      2 cookies, any variety
      2 Tbsp (30 mL) syrup topping (such as condensed milk, chocolate or strawberry syrup, or caramel sauce)

      Method

      1. Preheat the oven to 350° F (180° C).
         
      2. Working from the whole rectangular loaf, slice off enough bread so that the loaf resembles a cube with crust on five sides. Set aside excess loaf for later use.
         
      3. Create the toast box by hollowing out the loaf. Working with the cut side up, cut a square shape in the centre, leaving about ¼ inch around the edges. Make the cuts straight down until you reach about ¼ inch from the bottom crust.
         
      4. Turn the box onto one of its crust sides. To release the centre of the loaf, make a cut in the crust about ¼ inch from the bottom of one side. Cut straight across, leaving about the same ¼ inch on both edges. Turn the box upside down, and shake the loaf gently to carefully remove the centre.
         
      5. Working with the bread centre you’ve just removed, slice it into 9 sticks by cutting it into thirds and then thirds again.
         
      6. In a small bowl, combine butter and honey, and microwave for 10 to 20 seconds, or until just softened. Stir.
         
      7. Set the toast box and bread sticks onto a baking pan lined with aluminum foil. Using a pastry brush, brush all sides of the bread sticks and the inside of the toast box with the honey mixture. Sprinkle sugar over breadsticks. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, turning bread sticks over every 5 minutes, until bread is a light golden brown.
         
      8. Using tongs, carefully refill the box with the toast sticks, standing them on their ends beside one another. Transfer toast box onto a serving plate, top with ice cream, and decorate as you wish with fruit, candy, cookies, and syrup.

      Yield: 1 toast box (2 to 3 servings).

      Recipe has not been tested by the Georgia Straight.

      You can follow Michelle da Silva on Twitter at twitter.com/michdas.

      Comments