The Fresh Loaf

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Chelsea Buns

albacore's picture
albacore

Chelsea Buns

Inspired by a picture of Derek's (Yozzause) recent Chelsea bun bake and also by some Fitzbillies of Cambridge UK buns that our daughter sent us, I thought it was time to try my hand at them.

Similarities to cinammon buns of course, but a surprisingly steep learning curve to get them right. I will need a couple more bakes to get them nearer how I think they should be. But I'm happy enough for a first attempt.

The Fitzbillies have a sugar glaze top and bottom and I prefer this to the iced version we usually see. Also I used Derek's trick of soaking the dried fruit in fortified wine to soften it up a little and give a good flavour - a spot of cream sherry in this case, as I was out of tawny port.

 

Ready for rolling up:

 

 

 

Lance

Comments

yozzause's picture
yozzause

They look pretty good it looks like you used currants where as i used sultanas.. it also looks like you folded the dough before the roll up. i bet they didnt last long either. Nice job  

Derek

albacore's picture
albacore

Thanks Derek. The recipes I looked at used currants and I had some, so currants it was. Though I do prefer sultanas, I must admit.

Yes, I coated the pinned out dough sheet with butter/sugar paste and folded up to the top from the bottom. Then more paste and then the currants. Then roll up from the bottom and cut into 30mm slices.

Next time I'll roll up tighter and put the buns closer together. I reckon 20mm between buns and 10mm from the tray edges.

Lance

yozzause's picture
yozzause

i thought i could detect the roll up technique in the centre of the scroll.  Currants of course are berries off of bushes where as sultannas are grapes off of vines. The last lot of chelsea buns i made i experimented using a fishing line to cut them and i think i got a much nicer finish to the cut surface. especially helpful if the roll is a bit looser as the knife or scotch scraper tends to want to flatten the dough whereas the fishing line squeezes it together and pulls through  cleanly.  i just went and got some of my fishing line and tied two liittle wood dowels to each end to assist the pull through similar to what cheese cutters or clay  throwers use. You just place the dough on the line slight cross the  two toggle ends and pull,

Benito's picture
Benito

I’m sure these buns are long gone now Lance, they look delicious.

Benny

albacore's picture
albacore

Thanks Benny, we had a couple of thank you gifts to give to people that had helped us recently and these fitted the job perfectly!

yozzause's picture
yozzause

half a dozen of those are always great thankyou gifts and are great collateral on a local Bartering site.

happycat's picture
happycat

Great inspiration!

I've been wanting to make some kind of sweet bun for ages.

I was thinking to make this recipe:

https://www.sainsburysmagazine.co.uk/recipes/baking/classic-chelsea-buns

But I thought I'll do a tangzhong, food process the zest into the sugar, soak currants in fresh fruit juice, and glaze after baking with honey water.

Would be nice to amp up the dough as well with some interesting flour. I do have spelt kernels...

And then I read about a flying sponge making fluffier buns

https://www.chainbaker.com/how-to-make-chelsea-buns/

So I might work with that one instead

albacore's picture
albacore

Nice to see some good research David. I used a flying sponge, as does Chainbaker, but I don't think his sponge is as warm as it should be.

If you are interested I can PM you my recipe. It may need some deciphering as it's written just for me with my own abbreviations, so I don't really want to post it here.

Lance

happycat's picture
happycat

Thanks for the offer! I ended up adapting a recipe last night with all my crazy ideas (for an hour :p ) and baked some today. 

I'll put up a blog. It was fun. Thanks for the inspiration!