Chelsea Buns

21st February, 2015

This is my first time making bread dough and I was pretty excited to finally try out the dough hook on my Kenwood. This recipe came from the Kenwood recipe book which is really useful in telling you which setting and speed to put the mixer on and for how long. Baby steps for my first time!

So it was all made pretty easy. Add all the key ingredients (bread flour, yeast, caster sugar, milk and an egg) and put the mixer on a low speed for about 5 minutes. And voila! I had myself some dough. This needed covering with cling film and leaving to prove for an hour. 

Meanwhile I weight out all the filling ingredient including brown sugar, sultanas, mixed peel and mixed spice and mixed them into a bowl ready to spread onto the dough.

After an hour the dough had indeed doubled in size which was pretty exciting. This needed to be "knocked back" (poor dough) in the mixer for another minute before being rolled out to approximately 30x30cm on a floured surface. And obviously I used a tape measure along one side of the surface to make sure this was as accurate as possible. This meant I got to use my new rolling pin for the first time too! My square was a bit uneven in size and definitely had a thinner side, but what are you going to do. The next part was when I realised I don't own a pastry brush! I had to use the back of a spoon to smear the melted butter over the dough instead, before scattering the filling over all but one inch of one edge. I'm pretty sure I left more than an inch, but my square was a bit bigger and therefore the filling had its limits. This was rolled up from filling edge to non-filling edge and cut into eight pieces. These were squashed into my round cake tin (because I didn't own a square one) and covered again to leave for around 40 minutes to rise.

Then came the baking part!

...And of course I forgot to start the timer and left it in a little too long... But I think its ok. Just a little browner than golden brown. It smelt incredible!

Whilst the buns cooled I made a glaze out of water, caster sugar and a splash of orange juice (instead of orange flower water, whatever that is) and boiled it until it went syrupy! Again, without a pastry brush, this had to be dripped over the top with a spoon and sort of smeared over the top.

I think that went pretty well for my first time! Without blowing my own trumpet, it was pretty darn good sweet bread!

Oh, and whilst that was cooling, I totally made another tray of Easter nests!