I was waiting at the train station, where I found a Rotiboy store right before me. With my hungry stomach, I immediately purchased one of these famous Malaysian homegrown buns with its coffee-flavored crispy topping. When I got home, I thought, why don’t I try making the Rotiboy coffee bun at home?

Rotiboy coffee buns are known for their fluffy texture, filled with generous butter and topped with a crunchy coffee cookie crust. This distinctive combination creates a pleasing contrast between the soft inside and the crunchy outside.

While the original recipe is closely guarded, it can be replicated by following the general principles of bun making. Here’s my version, which tastes almost identical to the original Rotiboy coffee bun.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my privacy policy for more info. I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

🛒Ingredients needed for Rotiboy coffee bun

There aren’t any special ingredients required to make these buns. What makes them special is their unique flavor and creativity.

• Flour. As with any other bread and bun recipe, the flour used to make the dough is bread flour with a high protein content. We also need some regular flour (all-purpose flour) as part of the topping ingredients.
• Sugar.  You don’t need to use a specific type of sugar for this recipe, although I found that using fine sugar or caster sugar is easier to work with.
• Milk powder. If you don’t have milk powder, you can use full-cream milk to substitute the water in the recipe. However, if you do this, you may need slightly less milk to ensure the dough is not too wet. This is because the milk powder in this recipe makes up more than 10% of the dry ingredients.
• Yeast. I used instant yeast, so there’s no need to activate it by adding water. I simply sprinkled the yeast and mixed it well with the flour.
• Butter. I used unsalted butter. If you use salted butter, consider omitting the salt in the recipe.
• Egg. The egg is part of the ingredients for the dough and the topping.
• Instant coffee. I use instant coffee powder to impart the coffee flavor to the topping. I find that using espresso results in too much water in the dough, making it too runny to pipe onto the bun’s surface.

Rotiboy is a well-known Malaysian bakery chain famous for its “Rotiboy” bun, also known as the Mexican coffee bun. Established in April 1998 in Bukit Mertajam, Penang, by Hiro Tan, the name “Rotiboy” means “breadboy” in Malay, which was inspired by a playful nickname in the founder’s family.

👉 How to make Rotiboy coffee bun

There are three major steps to making coffee buns: making the dough, preparing the filling, and lastly, making the topping.

a. Prepare the dough

1. In a large bowl, combine bread flour, salt, milk powder, castor sugar, dry yeast, egg, and water.

2. Knead the dough for 4 minutes or until it comes together. Add the softened butter.

3. Continue kneading for another 8 minutes or until the dough passes the window pane test (able to stretch the bread dough paper thin to become semi-translucent without breaking it).

4. Knead the dough into a large ball and return it to the mixing bowl. Cover it with cling film or a damp cloth and let it proof at a warm place until it doubles in size. Depending on the strength of the yeast and temperature, this can take anywhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour.

b. Wrap the butter (filling) inside the dough

1. While proofing the dough, prepare six portions of butter, ten grams each. Shape each portion into cubes or round balls and freeze them.

2. Once the dough has doubled in size, divide it into six equal portions. For each small portion, further divide them into small and large pieces.

3. Encase each frozen butter cube within a small piece of dough, keeping the seam side facing up.

4. Roll out the larger piece of dough in a round shape and place it on top of the butter-encased dough. Ensure that the seam of the smaller dough with the butter is facing up.
Completely wrap the smaller dough using the larger dough, with the seam of the larger dough tucked underneath. (Please refer to the video below the recipe for more details.)
Place the buns on a baking tray lined with baking shee tand spacing them apart as they will expand in the oven. Set them aside to rise until they double in size again.

c. Make the coffee topping and bake the buns

1. Dissolve the instant coffee powder in a tablespoon of hot water. In a mixing bowl, combine unsalted butter and sugar. Beat until the mixture becomes light and fluffy and the color turns slightly pale. Then, add the beaten egg and the coffee mixture. Mix until homogeneous.

2. Whisk the mixture until it holds a peak. Add the regular flour and gently combine without overdoing it. Transfer the mixture to a piping bag and seal the bag.

3. Preheat the oven to 180°C/355°F. Pipe a layer of the topping in a circular motion, starting from the top of the buns, covering the top half of the dough. Fill in any gaps between the circular piping lines.

4. Bake the buns until the topping has formed a crisp crust, which takes around 20 minutes. Enjoy the buns while warm for the best experience.

💡Tips and notes for the best coffee bun

1. I knead the dough by hand since I only made six buns today. If you want to make a larger batch or prefer not to knead by hand, please use an electric mixer with the dough hook attachment at low speed. This will make the kneading process less strenuous.
2. I divided the dough into six equal-weight portions using a kitchen scale. However, I did not measure the weight when dividing each portion further into two: a small piece to wrap the frozen butter and a larger piece to encase the small portion inside. It does not need to be accurate.
3. Ensuring the encased butter does not leak out during baking is challenging. After several trials, I found that the best way to prevent it from happening is to first wrap the frozen butter in a small portion of the dough. Then, I use the remaining dough to wrap around the smaller dough. The smaller dough encasing the butter should face up during baking so that it will not leak out even when the butter melts in the oven. This double-wrapping method is so successful that all the buns turn out perfectly.
4. The consistency of the topping is another crucial aspect. If it is too runny, the topping that forms will be too thin, and most will melt and flow into the baking tray. Therefore, the amount of egg in the recipe and the water used to dissolve the instant coffee powder is crucial to achieve the best consistency for the topping.
5. If you do not have a piping bag, use a food-safe plastic bag instead.
6. Please note that the temperature and the baking time depend on each oven. The time and temperature in the recipe are what I used with my oven, and they are only guidelines.

📜 Other simple recipes related to Rotiboy coffee bun

• Pineapple Bun (Chinese: 菠蘿包) is a famous Hong Kong version of a similar bun popular in the Hong Kong-style café called Cha Chaan Teng/茶餐厅. It is quite similar to the coffee bun in this recipe, with the major difference being that it does not have coffee flavor.
• Mexican sweet buns, called conchas or pan dulce, have a traditional soft and fluffy texture and a unique topping resembling a seashell. “Concha” means “shell” in Spanish, representing the bun’s shell-shaped appearance. I speculate that Mexican buns inspired Rotiboy to create their recipe.
• The Japanese melon bun, also known as melonpan (メロンパン), is a sweet bun known for its tender and airy interior and a crunchy, biscuit-like outer layer that resembles the texture of a melon. Despite its name, melonpan usually doesn’t have a melon flavor; the name originates from the bun’s appearance, which is often marked with a crisscross pattern that imitates the pattern of a melon.

❄️ How long can I keep the Rotiboy bun?

Rotiboy coffee buns are best enjoyed on the day they are baked, while they are softest and most fluffy. Besides, the cookie crust on top is crunchy when fresh.

The baked buns can be kept in the refrigerator for at least one to two days. Before eating, I suggest heating them in the toaster oven or air fryer for three minutes at 180°C/355°F to restore the delicious crunchy texture of the topping.

If you intend to keep the buns longer, I recommend freezing them before piping the topping on them. The frozen raw buns can be kept for at least a week, and the yeast will remain active. After that, apply the topping, wait for them to double in size at room temperature, and bake the buns as usual.