Japanese Fruit Sandos!

Fruit sandos are a great summertime treat! Featuring fresh fruit and whipped cream, they're a portable treat that is pretty to look at too!

These sandos are popular in Japan and are made with shokupan bread, which is a beloved staple milk bread in Japan. If you don't live near a Japanese bakery, you'll have to make your own shokupan, which takes some time but it's worth the effort. Once we make the bread, we'll make some homemade whipped cream and build out the sandos with fruit. This is a fun little project that your family is sure to be impressed by, and enjoy as well!

I've tried a few shokupan recipes but found that I like the recipe from Chopstick Chronicles the best. Make sure you go check out her post because she really explains a lot about shokupan and gives a lot of options if you need to make any substitutions.

For the Yudane:

50 grams bread flour

40 ml boiling water

For the shokupan:

150 ml milk (at room temperature)

15 grams sugar

3 grams active dry yeast

10 grams unsalted butter (at room temperature)

200 grams of bread flour

5 grams of salt

For the whipped cream:

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

4 oz mascarpone cheese

1 tsp vanilla

Fruit. You can use whatever type of fruit you'd like but for this Instructable, I used:

Strawberries

Kiwi

Mango

Grapes

Cherries

Additional:

Rolling pin

Stand mixer with dough hook and whisk

Cling wrap

Serrated knife

Marker

Metal cookie cutter (optional)

Kitchen scale

For the Yudane:

50 grams bread flour

40 ml boiling water

The first step in this bread is to make yudane. This needs to happen the night before you start working on the rest of your bread so the yudane has a chance to rest and develop in the fridge overnight.

Add 40 grams of boiling water to 50 grams of bread flour and mix to combine. Make sure to work out any lumps. Wrap the yudane in plastic wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Yudane is similar to tangzhong that I used in the Fujisan Bread recipe I shared recently. They are both are a way of precooking a small portion of the dough either by cooking or scalding it which causes the starch to gelatinize. This makes the texture of bread soft, chewy and fluffy and can help the bread stay fresh longer. Yudane is more like a sticky playdough vs. the tangzhong that I made was more like a pancake batter.

For the shokupan:

150 ml milk (at room temperature)

15 grams sugar

3 grams active dry yeast

10 grams unsalted butter (at room temperature)

200 grams of bread flour

5 grams of salt

The following day, we can make the milk bread dough. Shokupan is popular in Japan and after making it, I can see why! I usually try to "Americanize" the recipes I try out, to make it so you don't have to use a kitchen scale, but in this case, the scale really does save the bread. I've made this recipe several times and the batch using the kitchen scale came out the best, by far. So if you don't have a scale, I would recommend investing in one (they're cheap!). Chopsticks Chronicles does give US Customary measurements if you need those, click on the blog post if interested.

Allow 150 ml of milk and 10 grams of unsalted butter to come up to room temperature, it should spend at least an hour out on the counter.

Add the room temperature milk to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment. Add in 15 grams of sugar, 3 grams of active dry yeast and the room temperature butter.

Get the yudane out of the fridge and unwrap it from the plastic wrap. It will be sticky! Tear little bits of the yudane off and toss into the stand mixer with the milk, sugar, yeast and butter.

Next add in the salt and the bread flour.

I know this step may seem rather specific, but I have made this bread a few times and if you don't put everything in in the right order, it doesn't turn out right so it is worth following closely.

Once all the ingredients are in the stand mixer, mix on low speed until everything is combined. It will look a little dry but at least your flour won't go flying everywhere. Once combined, turn your stand mixer up to speed 5 and let the mixer mix for about 20 minutes. At the end you should have a fairly sticky, but smooth, dough. Scrape off the dough hook.

To make sure the gluten has developed enough, you'll want to put your dough through the "windowpane test." Flour your hands to help prevent sticking, then gently pull up a piece of the dough and stretch it out. If you can make a "pane" between your hands and see your fingers through the other side of the dough, your dough passes the test! If you can't stretch the dough to form a pane, and it keeps ripping, knead for another couple of minutes then try the test again.

Next our dough needs to proof for a little bit. Place the dough in a greased mixing bowl (I sprayed my bowl with some olive oil) and cover with plastic wrap. Let your dough sit in a warm spot for about an hour or until the dough doubles in size.

TIP: If your kitchen is cold, you can proof your dough in a insulated cooler. Add a few inches of boiling water to the bottom of the cooler then put your bowl in and cover the cooler with the lid. You don't want your dough actually in the water. In my case, my bowl was too big to get into the bottom of the cooler, so I didn't have to worry about it touching, but if your cooler is bigger you could always pour the hot water into cups and arrange them around the bowl or prop the bowl up on something to keep it out of the water.

Once your dough has doubled in size, flour your finger and poke the dough. If your dough has properly risen, your finger poke should stay in the dough and not spring back up again. If the dough springs back up, let your dough rise for a little longer. If your dough is ready though, punch it down and roll it out onto the counter.

Split the dough in two and roll each half of the dough into a ball. Cover the dough balls with a wet tea towel and let rest on the bench for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes of resting, roll each ball of dough into 6 by 8 rectangle using a rolling pin. Dust with a little flour if needed, to keep it from sticking.

Fold the top 1/3 of the dough into the middle of the rectangle, then fold the bottom 1/3 up to the middle to cover the top, like you're folding a piece of paper into thirds.

Rotate the dough sideways then roll it up into a spiral, just like a little sleeping bag!

Repeat the rolling step for the second ball of dough, then place both rolls into a prepared loaf pan. Point the "tails" of the dough so they are facing the inside of the loaf pan.

Cover the pan with a wet tea towel again and let it rest for about 30 minutes, or until the dough is level with the top of your loaf pan. In my case, it was a little over a half hour.

Once the dough has risen and is level with the top of your loaf pan, preheat the oven to 365 degrees F. Bake in the preheated oven for 25-30 minutes until the loaf is nicely browned. Brush the top with a beaten egg right out of the oven, if desired. (We have egg allergies in our house so I skipped this step.)

Turn out the loaf onto a cooling rack and allow to cool completely. Check out the cute spiral you can see from our sleeping bag step!

Separate the two halves of the bread and slice up for sandwiches using a serrated bread knife. Let the knife do the work and make sure not to mash the bread down as you cut. This is easier to do if you wait until the next day. Store in an airtight container.

Combine 1 cup of heavy whipping cream with 2 tablespoons of sugar. Beat with a mixer fitted with a whisk until soft peaks form, which takes just a few minutes. Add in 4 oz of mascarpone cheese and 1 tsp of vanilla. Beat until a thick whip cream is achieved. Make sure you don't over whip your cream though or you'll end up with butter!

Now that the bread and the cream is all ready, we can work on the fruit!

Fruit Sandos are a perfect summer time treat. You can make whatever design you'd like, or just put in slices of fruit to make it more evenly distributed.

In my case, I decided to work with strawberries, cherries, mango, kiwi and grapes.

To prep the fruit, make sure to wash and peel anything that needs to be peeled, such as the mango and kiwi. A potato peeler really helps this step go quickly!

Cut the sides off the kiwi and then cut the middle square of the kiwi into strips. These will be used as flower leaves and stems. I'll mention more specific fruit prep below for each type of sandwich.

First let's make a strawberry tulip sando. To make a tulip out of a strawberry, start by cutting the green top off the strawberry. Next, carefully carve a w shape into the top of the strawberry.

Next, place a layer of cling film on your cutting board.

Add one slice of shokupan bread to the board and spread on a thin layer of whipped cream. Place the strawberry on its side toward the top right corner of the sando. Add a kiwi leaf, flat side down. Add a little whipped cream to fill in the area at the bottom of the strawberry, making a flat surface. Next, place a strip of kiwi for the stem. Add a little more cream and then another kiwi leaf. Finally add extra strawberries and more cream around the sides of the fruit just so you don't have a big empty spot on the sides of your flower.

TIP: Use a sandwich baggie with the corner cut off to help pipe the cream where you need it.

Spread whipped cream on a second piece of bread and then place it on top to form a sandwich. Gently press down and wrap the sandwich with the cling film.

Use a marker and mark the direction of the fruit so you know which way to cut the sando open to reveal your flower after it has sat in the fridge for at least an hour.

Next let's try a mango flower! I cut the mango into slabs and then used this cute little flower cutter I have for cutting things for bento boxes. Punch out a few mango flowers and put them in a row along the corner edge of the bread. I added a kiwi stem and leaf and added a few grapes in the "extra" space on the sides. Add more whipped cream over everything then put on another piece of bread, wrap in cling film and mark the direction of the flower like we did in the last step.

I wanted to make a few more designs to finish up my sandos. For one, I lined up half strawberries along the diagonal and on the other I put halved cherries at the top and used a kiwi stem at the bottom. As we did in the previous steps, add more whipped cream, top with a second piece of bread and then wrap and mark the sandos. Place them all in the fridge for at least an hour.

After the sandos have had a chance to set up in the fridge, you can finally cut them open to reveal the designs inside! Carefully unwrap each sando, paying attention to the direction of the line you drew on the cling wrap. Gently cut the sando in half using a serrated knife. Let the knife do the work! Make gentle sawing motions and don't press down too hard or you'll squish out the cream. If you need to, you can use the edge of the knife to scrape away any whipped cream that smears across the fruit. Add a little extra whipped cream to fill in the edges, if needed.

Finally- enjoy!

These would be great for a tea party, Mother's Day brunch or just because it's summer and fruit is plentiful! These are really tasty and worth the effort to make the milk bread, but if you would like to skip that step, you can use a loaf of Kings Hawaiian instead (or honestly even Wonder Bread would probably be fine). It won't be quite the same, because milk bread has a little chew to it, but it'll make it super easy to make these quickly anytime!

Leftovers can be kept in the fridge for a day or so. The bread might start to get soggy so it is best if enjoyed the day you make them. Shokupan is also a great bread on its own, so even if you don't make fruit sandos, try out making milk bread sometime, you won't be disappointed!