Making a Taiwanese Favorite: Brick Toast

By Elliot Wu
Chief Financial Officer

With AP tests right around the corner, most students spend their remaining time intensively cramming for their exams. Naturally, the perfect study party requires the ideal snack. This recipe is a popular Taiwanese dessert that will be sure to impress.

Ingredients:

½ cup non-fat powdered milk

⅓ cup granulated sugar
⅓ cup unsalted butter, cubed
pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
1 ½ inch thick slice of bread

The main ingredient is the bread, and it can’t be the kind you would find at the supermarket. It has to be a very dense, Asian style toast. And to top it all off, it can’t be pre-sliced, because the slices made at the bakery are not thick enough to accommodate the other ingredients to come. What I do is go early in the morning when the local Asian bakery opens, rush in and ask for a loaf of bread before they slice it. I usually go to the Honey Bee Bakery in the plaza on Oak and Las Tunas. It shouldn’t cost more than two dollars.

Why bother with getting a different bread at all? Well the Asian style toast is perfectly square, something I’ve yet to see in a bread from the supermarket. The crust is a little tougher than that of regular white bread, which creates a crunchier texture. Also, the denser crumb of the bread makes it more durable to the ingredients to come. Any other kind of bread wouldn’t be able to withstand them.

Once you have obtained your bread of choice, cut a 1 ½ inch (more or less) slice off of it. Next, score a pound symbol (#) deep into the bread, but not all the way through. This will allow the ingredients to permeate deep into the crevices of the bread and make its own filling.

Put it on a plate and set it aside.

Preheat your toaster oven to 350 degrees.

Assembling the paste is a snap. Simply throw in the butter, powdered milk, sugar, egg yolk and salt into a bowl and combine them thoroughly with your fingers. It will take around five minutes of continuous kneading and should become a yellow paste.

This paste is good for two batches, so take half to put on the bread and store the rest covered in a refrigerator. Spread it all over the bread, making sure to cover the very edges and corners. If some seems to disappear into the bread, that is good because it means you’ve scored your bread correctly. Bake in the oven for six minutes, then turn it around 180 degrees and bake for another six minutes. Serve immediately; brick toast does not do well over a long period of time.

While decorating is not necessary for the forever alone dinner, brick toast is a blank slate just waiting for adornment. Sprinkle on some powdered sugar, toss on a handful of diced fresh fruit, drizzle some condensed milk or drop on a dollop of Nutella. What you end up with is the perfect snack for a study group.