Christmas morning Chelsea buns

I mentioned yesterday that we had Chelsea buns for breakfast on Christmas morning, so I thought it was only fair to share the recipe with you!

Despite my Bread Day at River Cottage and my other bread making exploits (you can read about them here, and here ) I have always been a bit scared of making Chelsea buns.

Recently, I was very kindly sent a recipe on Facebook (if you haven’t already, you can come and like the My Make Do and Mend Year page here :)) by a lovely lady called Ellen Randall, after seeing her picture of her amazing buns (!)

I was mulling over what to have for breakfast on Christmas morning, and after consulting the wisdom of the people in the Twittersphere, who assured me I could leave them to prove in the fridge overnight, I made a late Christmas Eve decision to go for it…

Here is what you need:

Dough mix:

• 250ml whole milk
• 50g butter
• 500g strong white bread flour
• 30g caster sugar
• 1tsp salt
• 7g sachet fast action yeast
• 1 egg beaten

For the filling:

• 150g soft brown sugar
• 3tbs cinnamon (yes that’s tablespoons)
• 60g softened butter
•  75g currants

This is what you do:

Dough mix:

• Put milk and butter in a pan over a low heat and warm until butter has melted
• Allow mixture to stand till lukewarm
• In a large mixing bowl, mix flour, sugar, salt and yeast
• Add milk mixture and egg and mix to form a soft dough
• Knead dough on floured work surface for 10mins until smooth and elastic (I cheated and did all of the mixing/kneading in my Kitchen Aid Mixer with the dough hook, and kneaded it for about 6 mins)
• Put in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with cling film
• Put bowl in a warm place and leave to rise for 1hr
• Tip onto work surface and roll out to 40cm x 50cm
• Grease a high sided 23cm x 33cm tray.

For the filling:

• Mix the soft brown sugar and cinnamon
• Spread the butter gently over the dough
• Sprinkle sugar mix over the top and scatter currants on top

To make the buns:

• Starting with long end, roll into a tight log
• Trim ends, slice into 16 pieces and place in greased tin
• Cover with cling film and leave to rise for 45mins (or do as I did, and place in the fridge overnight, then take them out when you get up, and allow them to come to room temperature before cooking them)
• Preheat oven to 180’C
• Brush buns with melted butter and bake for 30 mins (I covered them with foil for the last 10mins so they didn’t burn)
• Drizzle with icing if required (I followed Ellen’s suggestion and mixed icing sugar and orange juice for my icing)
• I then took them out of the tray and artfully arranged them in the shape of a Christmas tree (but obviously forgot to take a picture..)
• EAT

These are AMAZING! And really not that hard at all. They went down a storm and took minimal effort on Christmas morning.

We may have made ourselves a new Christmas tradition here. Thankyou so much Ellen 🙂