5 things you mightn’t know about pineapple buns...

A pineapple bun (or bo lo bao) consists of a soft sweet bun topped with a harder crumbly cookiestyle crust made of sugar, eggs, flour and lard. When cooked, this crust on top cracks open, giving the bun a pineapple-like appearance on top. That’s where it gets its name – there’s no actual pineapple in the ingredient list. We’re sure you knew that fact, but here are a few other things about this delicious bakery snack that you mightn’t know!

• “Pineapple Bun” was once nominated as a typhoon name but rejected on the grounds that it would sound silly in otherwise serious news reports of the storm.

• The famous snack appeared in animated form in the 2004 film McDull, The Prince of the Pineapple Bun with Butter.

• In 2014, the pineapple bun made it onto the government’s list of 480 “items of living cultural heritage” (along with entries such as fire dragon dances, kung fu and the making of snake wine). • A Japanese variety of the pineapple bun is the “melonpan”, whose top resembles a rockmelon or cantaloupe.

• Among the famous places to buy the buns in Hong Kong is Tai Tung Bakery in Yuen Long, which has made around 1,000 of them daily for well over 70 years.