These chelsea butter buns are PERFECT!!! They are the best perfectly perfect fabulous awesome loveliness (running out of adjectives). I know this because I didn’t make them. Megan did. Megan, who needs no introduction after sharing her lovely soups and savoury muffins previously.
Here’s her fabulous how-to guide for Chelsea butter buns – old school style with pink icing, coz it tastes better than way. Perfect! Take it away megs:
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I have been meaning to make these for weeks, ever since Aimee and I visited this amazing little cafe in Soho in London, where we shared this amazing Chelsea butter bun.
When I came back to Melbourne, I dragged out my copy of the Women’s Weekly ‘How to Cook Absolutely Everything’ book and sure enough, there was a recipe in there for these delicious little buns!
So this weekend, I attempted to make them. I followed the recipe below verbatim, but found you could definitely cut the butter ratio to around 100 grams, brown sugar to about ½ a cup and even the currants to about 1 ½ cups.
It goes a little something like this:
Cut them up, nice are carefully.
Line them up on your greased tray. Then cook them!
ice ‘em. eat ‘em. (say hello to the chelsea butter bun official tester. tough life for some!)
Here’s the recipe!
Ingredients
1 tablespoon of dried yeast
1 tablespoon caster sugar
4 cups plain flour
1 ½ cups warm milk
2 cups (320g) dried currents (see notes above, I would use 1 ½ next time, you can also use a selection of dried fruit)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 egg
125g butter, melted
2/3 cup of firmly packed brown sugar
Icing
1 cup icing sugar
1 tablespoon milk
pink food colouring
Method
- Preheat your oven to moderately hot (200°C/180°C fan forced).
- Combine yeast, 1 teaspoon of the flour and milk in small bowl, cover, stand in warm place for about 10 minutes or until mixture is frothy.
- Place currants in small saucepan, cover with water, bring to boil. Remove from heat, cover, cool for 15 minutes. Drain currents well, combine in small bowl with rind and cinnamon.
- Whisk egg into yeast mixture. Sift remaining flour into a large bowl; stir in yeast mixture. Cover, stand in warm place for about 40 minutes or until dough has doubled in size. Use this time do the dishes you were meant to do last night, except you went to the pub instead.
- Knead dough on floured surface for about 3 minutes or until smooth. Roll dough into 30 cm x 40 cm rectangle. Brush with a quarter of the butter and sprinkle with a third of the brown sugar.
- Grease a deep 23cm square cake pan. Fold one end of the dough to come two-thirds of the way up the dough, fold over top third to cover first fold. Turn dough halfway around to have the open ends facing you. (see pics above)
- Roll dough into 30 cm x 40 cm rectangle. Repeat folding from Step 5, using the same amount of butter and brown sugar. Turn dough halfway round, roll into 30 cm x 40 cm rectangle. Brush dough with half the remaining butter, sprinkle with remaining brown sugar and the current mixture.
- Roll dough firmly from the long side like a Swiss roll (I’ve never made one of these, but I like to eat them!). Cut dough evenly into nine pieces, place buns, cut side up, in the greased pan. Sprinkle with the remaining caster sugar. Stand, uncovered in a warm spot for 20 minutes or until buns have risen slightly.
- Drizzle buns with remaining butter. Bake, uncovered for 5 minutes. Reduce temperature to moderate (180°C/160°C fan forced). Bake for a further 25 minutes or until golden brown.
- Meanwhile make icing. Use no more than one drop of food colouring, unless you like my psychedelic pink icing in the photos above, in that case use 3-4 drops.
- Turn buns onto wire rack, drizzle a little icing onto each bun, cool.
- To make icing: Sift icing sugar into small bowl, stir in enough milk to form a thin, smooth paste. Tint with food colouring.
Healthy? 16.9g total fat (10.4 saturated), 2788kj (667 cal), 112g carbohydrates, 13g protein, 5.0g fibre. I would actually have an ambulance on standby for when you go into a diabetic coma from too much sugar.
Gluten free? Not this recipe.
Storage? Web searches say you can freeze them. I’ll give it a go and report back.
