This weekend we fancied doing some experimentation in the the kitchen, so I decided to try my hand at something I'm not very confident with, dough!
I love chelsea buns, and they always remind me of carol signing at Christmas, where we were always given the most amazing buns warm from the oven to thaw our frozen fingers on. I had a look through my Paul Hollywood 'How to Bake' book to find a good recipe and found his recipe for Christmas buns. The filling for the Christmas buns called for Apricots and cranberries, however we decided to use a mixture of dried apricots, cherries and raisins and called them Yardley buns after our village. Plus it's far too early to start thinking about Christmas yet!
I have never had a huge amount of luck with raising dough to extraordinary heights, a loaf of bread I made with my mum when I was younger you could have provided an excellent foundation for a new building, so I have always been wary of it.
We started kneading the dough using the KitchenAid dough hook, and then proved the dough for two hours.
After the first prove we rolled out the dough to a rectangle, brushed the surface with melted butter and then scattered over the dried fruits, sugar and cinnamon mixture.
The roll of the chelsea bun is very important, and I think mine may have been a little too lose, as I had to poke some of the escaped fruit into the swirls before their second prove.
After their second prove I put them in the oven and waited for the delicious sweet bread smell. Once they had cooked I brushed them all with apricot jam and waited until they had cooled just enough so we could try them!
Unfortunately I found that the buns didn't last very well (both in freshness and in number!) so I think in the future I will have to make them for an event so they can all be eaten at their very best.
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