A love song to the Chelsea Bun

So, for most things baking related I'm pretty much up for anything.  There are a few things that still give me the heeby-jeebyz and working with yeast is one of them.  This is a little ironic that in my youth I worked in a pizzeria making bin loads of dough from fresh yeast - happy as a clam sitting on a mixer while stretching and kneading dough until they fired my ass and, well, that's another story for another day!

This recipe is loosely based on the one that comes in the Kenwood cookbook; it's the wunderkind of a cinnamon bun and a Chelsea bun. It's simple to make, but takes time, it is worth it though.  I have included suggestions for making the drawn out process as lazy as possible.

There are variations where you use fruit soaked in tea or whiskey overnight and I'll update this after I make my Christmas cakes when I will be soaking the fruit in Jameson anyway. 

Equipment notes;

You will need to use your 8" tin (which I usually use for my Christmas cake) for putting the rolls in. I use a silicone brush for brushing the dough and the glaze.

Be warned this recipe makes twelve and they are that good warm that you may attempt to eat them all so make sure you have enough mouths.

Dry ingredients

500g Strong White Flour

1 tsp Salt

2 sachets of dried fast action yeast

75g sugar

50g butter

Wet ingredients

225g lukewarm milk*

1 egg

Filling

Light muscovado sugar

A fistful of sultanas or two

Mixed spice

Cinnamon

30g Butter melted

Glaze:

40g Sugar

4tbsp water

1. Dry ingredients into a stand mixer with a dough hook. Turn it onto it's lowest setting and let the butter mix in properly. 
2. Mix the wet ingredients together and pour into the dry ingredients and leave the machine to knead for 5 mins.
3. Take the dough off the hook and leave it in the bowl covered with clingfilm (saran wrap) that has been oiled on the inside. Put it in a warm place for an hour or until it has doubled in size. (Note: how I do this is put the bowl near a radiator turn on the heating and watch a couple of half hour shows on netflix when they're over move to step four.
4. Peel off the cling film carefully you'll be using it again shortly.  Knock the air out of the dough by putting the bowl back into the stand mixer with the dough hook and turning it on for 1 min.
5. Grease your 8" tin
6. Roll out the dough till its about a foot square.  Brush it generously with melted butter sprinkle a good fistful of muscovado sugar in an even layer and the sprinkle the spices on top about a level tsp of each for me works for me and then finally the dried fruit evenly over the dough.
7. Roll it up like a big old swiss roll.  Cut it in half, then cut those halves in half to make four even pieces which are finally each divided in three.  Place the rolls cut side up in the prepared tin and cover with the cling film again.  Place them in the warm place again for 30-40mins. (Note: This time you make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and turn on the oven to 200c before you sit down to watch another episode of something and when it's over pop the buns in the oven).
8. Bake for 20-25 mins.  Take them out of the oven but leave them in the tin. 
9. To make the glaze: put sugar and water in the pot and dissolve over a medium. Dont bother with a spoon just swirl it to mix. Once the sugar has been dissolved let the glaze boil for a minute or two until it becomes syrupy. Brush it on the buns and allow to cool.

*How to know if your milk is lukewarm (the right temperature)

Pop the milk in the microwave for 20 seconds, stick a washed finger knuckle in and ask yourself this does it feel nice and warm but you wouldn't describe it as warm enough to be hot. If you still feel I'm being a little wishy washy try this pour equal quantities of boiling water and tap water together and stick your finger in the cup. That's how it should feel but you needn't be too exacting.

What is a pinch of salt? How much is a pinch of salt?

Literally it refers to the amount of salt that you can pick up between your index finger and thumb.

Sugar Paste Smoother

It may look like something from a hardware store but this is for smoothing out bumps and lumps in sugarcraft.
This one is from This ones from Kitchen Complements just off Grafton Street in Dublin

How to apply Almond Paste

This is my technique for applying the almond paste.  It may not be elegant but it is quick and effective.  The trick is to get enough icing sugar on the board so that it is not completely stuck (in which case it would tear, but will only move from the board on your encouragement).
You will need:

• A quantity of Almond Paste
• A sugar paste smoother 
• A rolling pin
• A pastry Brush
• Apricot Jam/ Marmalade 
• Icing Sugar (just enough for rolling out the almond paste)
• Wooden chopping board the size of the top of the cake.

Method

1. Dust your work surface with Icing sugar and roll out to 1cm thickness. 
2. Warm 2 tbsp of apricot jam or marmalade in the microwave and brush the top with it.
3. Place the board just above the cake so that it is centered and the top is completely covered and dislodge it from the board with a large knife.  (You shouldn't need to scrape it off it should fall off and directly onto the cake with just a little encouragement)  If that isn't the case then add a little icing to the paste and roll it out again.
4. Trim the top as you would a pie.  Brush the sides with the apricot marmalade.  Roll out the sides in manageable sections.  Apply to the sides of the cake.  Where you have a join in the sides overlap the two pieces and cut straight through the overlapped pieces and discard (or eat!) the trimmings so that you have two perfectly matching pieces.
5. Firmly rub the cake all over with the sugarpaste smoother to make sure that it sticks to the cake and that the Almond paste is one smooth solid coating.

Almond Paste

What is almond paste? Almond paste is the layer between the Icing and the Christmas Cake.  It provides a smooth even surface to ice a cake on.  I have to similes and you can pick one that makes most sense to you: 1. Its like lining paper when you're wallpapering or 2. Its like applying Smashbox Photo finish before you apply foundation.  I hate almond extract so I leave it out but it's really up to you.  This can be baked in the oven on the fruit cake without ever having to ice the cake just brush with a little egg white first.


450g Ground Almonds
450g Caster Sugar
3 Tbsp Whiskey
2 small Eggs
A few drops of Almond extract.

Method

1. Mix dry ingredients then make a hole in the middle and add the wet ingredients and mix thoroughly.
2. Roll out with Icing Sugar
3. Apply to cake

Biscuits / Cookies - Whats the difference?

Nowadays the words Biscuits and Cookies are fairly interchangeable and you will tend to use one or the other depending on what side of the Atlantic you're from.

From my understanding Biscuits were originally a means of using up leftover bread dough (therefore they would often be yeast based) sugar and fruit was then added where available and thus the biscuit was born.  Biscuits as we know them today are usually crisp baked goods of a variety of shapes and sizes.  You can even find savoury biscuits ideal for serving with cheese or soup.  Biscuits found in the Southern States of American are much closer to a plain scone.

Cookies came by way of the Dutch (from the word Kuchen) and were originally soft baked (a very popular choice to this day).

How to grease and flour a tin

1. Using a piece of greaseproof paper, kitchen roll or indeed a butter wrapper rub a piece of butter or margarine around the inside of a cake tin ensuring that get into all the corners.
2. Add a teaspoon of flour to the tin and rotate the tin until all the greased parts now have a little layer of flour.

How to Line a Baking Tin

1. Grease the tin
2. For the base: 
1. Cut a piece of greaseproof paper slightly larger than the diameter of the tin squared
2. Fold the sheet in half, then in quarter, then in eights (it should be the shape of a pointy triangle with an untidy end).
3. Measure the paper with the pointy end in the middle and trim the edges so that it fits inside the tin.
4. Open it out and you should have a piece of greaseproof paper roughly the size of the base of your tin.
3. For the sides:
1. Measure the circumference of tin and add 3cm, Measure the height of the tin and add 4cm
2. Cut a piece of greaseproof paper to these measurements.
3. Make cuts along the length of paper 2cm deep to form a fringe. Fold these cuts upwards.
4. Place inside the tin along the sides with the fringe inside. 
4. Insert the base.

How to grease a tin

Using a piece of greaseproof paper, kitchen roll or indeed a butter wrapper rub a piece of butter or margarine around the inside of a cake tin ensuring that get into all the corners.

What is a cookie Sheet?

A cookie sheet is a solid sheet on which cookies are baked.  I had always used baking trays until I discovered the ones I use of which I have about four because that way I can have cookies chilling in the fridge or freezer, cookies on cookie trays ready to go into the oven, cookies cooling on the trays before being lifted onto the cooling rack. They are the width of my oven which means I can fit as many in as possible, they are uncomplicated, they are cheap and easy to clean.

Freezing Cooking Dough

Even though cookies themselves cant be frozen, most cookie dough can be frozen but there are a few things that you need to bear in mind.

1. Use cling film or a freezer bag to wrap it up properly so that no parts are exposed
2. Label it and date it.You don't need to do anything fancy in fact a permanent marker will do the job.
3. Though it may vary according to ingredients a good rule of thumb is to use all within a month of freezing.
4. Basic Cookie dough can be sliced frozen and put straight but as a general rule I would say defrost thoroughly and continue as if the dough had just been chilled.

Hulling strawberries

This is the method I use for getting rid of the green leaves on strawberries or the proper term how to hull strawberries.  Take an ordinary drinking straw and push it up through the strawberry from the pointy end and aim for the green bit at the top.  When the drinking straw breaks through the top of the strawberry the green part comes out whole as does the flavourless core.

The alternative is to use a small sharp knife to cut out the leafy green part.

Raising Agent / Leavening Agent

Basic rule of baking if you want something to rise you will either need to use eggs and/or a raising agent of some description. You need bubbles to make cakes, breads and even some cookies rise.  The bubbles get warm in the oven they expand and your baking goods get lighter.  So the obvious question would be why are there so many types of raising agents and whats the difference between them.  Can you swap them?

Yeast - Typically used in breads, pizzas and bread based buns (Chelsea buns & Cinnamon buns).  It's not suitable for cakes as a general rule because yeast has a fairly strong flavour, especially in the case of sour dough.  Using yeast means taking time to leaven and knead the bread.  Yeast is a living organism that needs feeding (sugar of some description) and warmth to be kicked into action.

• Fresh Yeast - The best way that I can describe it that it looks like putty and smells like beer.
• Dried Fast Action Yeast - Powdered version of fresh yeast that is much more predictable 
• Sour Dough Starters - This is nothing shy of magic in my books. In the new year I will tackle the whole Sour Dough Bread thing.

Bread Soda / Baking Soda -Typically used for scones, cookies and Irish soda bread among many others. If you've ever made a Baking Soda Volcano you will know that if you add an acid to Bread Soda (who for those want it's proper chemical term it's NaCl -Sodium Chloride) it will fizz up and release a gas called carbon dioxide (CO2 this is the stuff we exhale).  This is a fairly instantaneous release of gas so only add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients when you're ready to pop it into the oven.  Cakes that have a high acid content in them such as a lemon based cake or a cake with either buttermilk, sour cream, or yogurt in them will use baking soda as either the main raising agent or an additional agent to balance the chemical process and improve flavour.  This seems to be much more common in American baking recipes than Irish or UK equivalents.  I wonder of the origins I'm all ears if someone can enlighten (see the way I 'lightened' the sentence with a baking pun) me.

Baking Powder - Typically used for cakes.  Baking powder is composed of everything that you need   (Baking Soda and an Alkaline, a stabiliser (quite often Cream of Tartar) and some cornflour (so its not as at risk to moisture) in the correct ratios, to make a cake rise.  Typically a recipe calls for 1 teaspoon baking powder per 200g Plain Flour.  The actual baking powder recipe changes from company to company including one discovered by the man who created Birds Custard.

Self Raising Flour - I'm including this because even though it's not a raising agent it contains the correct ratio of flour to raising agent to make a cake rise, this makes life much easier.

Just a note on Scones and  Soda Bread if you have buttermilk use baking soda if you have fresh milk use baking powder

Bain Marie

Though a Bain Marie sounds very fancy, it is little more than a bowl sitting above a smaller bowl of hot water.  The water in the smaller bowl should not touch the bowl above.  Think of melting chocolate for rice krispie buns when you were a kid.

A Bain Marie has two functions:

1. To keep food warm (the stainless steel version favoured by carveries)
2. To apply heat gently without burning 

Rolling out Shortcrust Pastry

It can be a pain in the rear rolling out pastry.  If you want to roll it out evenly and make it easy to pick up the trick is to roll it out between two sheets of grease proof paper.  Roll in one direction but keep turning the disk to get an even shape.  When it comes to lining your tin peel the top layer off and place whats left in the tin pastry side down.  Peel the remaining layer of grease proof paper off gently.

Baking Blind

Baking blind is to par-bake pastry so that the filling does not make the crust mushy.

To bake blind you will need:

Grease proof paper/ baking parchment or brown paper
Ceramic baking beads/ Chickpeas or other dried pulses
Egg white

Method

1. Place the pastry in the tin.  
2. Place a sheet of paper a little larger than the tin on top of the tin.  
3. Fill the sheet with baking beads
4. Bake in the oven for 10 mins
5. Remove from the oven remove the beads and the paper.  Glaze the  pastry case with egg white and return to the oven for 5 mins

Why sieve or sift flour? What difference does it make?

A sieve is a fine wire mesh with a handle used in baking.  It is typically bowl shaped or conical.

Purposes

• Removing lumps from 
• powders used in baking e.g. flour cocoa
• other things that can be pushed through the sieve like raspberries to remove the seeds when making raspberry coulis
• Mixing ingredients together e.g. sifting baking powder and flour together for even distribution
• To add air to a mix e.g. a sponge cake.

Alternative:
In many cases you can use a whisk to add air, mix dry ingredients or remove lumps.

Care:
The main disadvantage is that its something else to wash up afterwards.  Wash it dry it and pop it in the oven for a few minutes to dry off the metal fully as your ovens cooling down after baking.  It will prolong the life of your sieve by not going rusty. (I know this goes without saying, but only put the sieve in the oven if it has no melt-able parts and please remember to use an oven glove to handle it).

The difference between a cake and a biscuit

The answer to this is also the answer to why a Jaffa Cake is a cake and not a biscuit. If left out overnight a cake gets hard and a biscuit gets soft. Jaffa Cakes had to prove themselved as Cakes in 1991 to retain their VAT free status in the UK because if they changed to biscuits they would have change VAT brackets.

How to tell something if is baked

Victoria sponges and most other cakes Pop a skewer into the cake and it should come out clean (ie not with uncooked cake batter on it)

Sponge Cakes When you press gently on the cake it should spring back up and as with most cakes it should start to pull away from the sides of the tin.

Bread Knock on it's underside it should sound hollow. This is the description generally used and it sounds a bit mad but if you want to get a comparable sound knock on a cake of uncut brown soda next time you buy one and you'll get what I mean.

Biscuits and Cookies They should darken a little in colour and get that smell that makes your tummy rumble. Some like their cookies a little soft and thus require a little less time in the oven.

How to release a cake from a springform or loose bottom tin

This is one of those things that I didn't think too much about but it meant that when I learned what to do it saved me from cheesecake arms or worse, burns.

1. Run a knife around the inside edge of the cake tin.
2. Take a either a soup bowl or dessert bowl that is deeper than the tin and place it under the tin.
3. Release the clasp (if present)
4. Gently slide the sides of the cake tin down the side of the cake until it circles the bowl.
5. You are now left with the base.