Amelia Buns

For Christmas this year my husband and I decided that we need to start our own traditions ready for our first Christmas with our child next year. Last year my mum made some lovely cinnamon buns, however, hubby doesn't like cinnamon, so I set about thinking of alternatives. In the end I decided to adapt a Chelsea bun recipe and name it after our child. I had to wait until we knew whether she was a girl or boy for this so on Monday the buns officially became Amelia Buns. 

I will put the whole recipe on here this time, as it's an adapted recipe, so there are no copyright issues, however I should say that the recipe originally came from the BBC Good Food website and can be found here. 

The recipe basically asks for a sweet bread dough mix to be made, filling to be added and then baked but here are the details. 

Ingredients:

500g Strong White Bread Flour

7g Fast acting dried yeast

1 Egg

300ml Skimmed Milk

40g Sunflower Spread

Filling:

Whatever takes your fancy we used,

Chocolate Spread

Juice of 1 Orange

Dried Mixed Fruit

1. Place the bread in a large mixing bowl and add the dried yeast to the centre of it. 

2. Warm the milk and the spread until the spread has melted and the milk is lukewarm. We did this in a jug in the microwave but it can be done in a small saucepan too. You need to make sure the milk isn't too warm that it kills the yeast but warm enough. I did it so it was warm to touch from the outside of the jug.

3. Tip the milk mix into the flour mix and stir to combine, add the egg. Once it is fairly well combined turn out onto a well floured surface and knead the dough for around 5 minutes, until it becomes stretchy and smooth. We found that quite a bit of flour was needed to achieve this as the dough was very moist. 

4. Place the dough in a well oiled bowl and leave to rise for 1 hour at room temperature, covered with a tea towel, if like us your cat would investigate it!! The dough should double in size. 

5. Tip the dough onto a well floured surface and roll into a  rectangle shape, it should be around 30cm x 20cm but you don't have to be exact. 

Rectangle dough with chocolate spread, this is TOO much!!

6. This is the fun bit, add what ever fillings you want on the dough. We mixed around 1/3 jar of chocolate spread with orange juice and then spread this on and then sprinkled the dried fruits onto until it was well covered. Be careful not to use too much chocolate spread as first time I made these I used 1 whole jar, when cooked it made them very difficult to eat!! 

7. Roll the dough up, like a swiss roll, as tightly as you can holding everything together. Then slice it into 10 even pieces. 

8. Place these, cut side down, onto a baking tin leaving room between each for further expansion. You should be able to see the nice swirl on every bun here. 

Due to excessive filling these are a bit squashed, leave more room between them if you can!!

9. If you wish to make these ahead then place them in the fridge at this point until you're ready for them. First time we made these the night before and left in the fridge overnight, then get them out to reach room temperature before the next step. Otherwise leave them at room temperature to rise for 30 minutes. 

10. Place the buns in the oven at 190oC for around 25mins, until golden brown. 

11. Allow them to cool slightly and then extract them from the tin and enjoy!!  

Bulging out of the tin, the buns hot out the oven

Removed and ready to enjoy!!

 We really enjoyed these buns and they were popular with our family on New Years Day also. They can be adapted to include anything and I'm sure in future years, if Amelia is anything like her father, ours will get stranger and stranger. For now though, we enjoyed these rather tasty chocolatey and messy buns!!