Hot Cross Chelsea Buns

I’ve been making different versions of hot cross buns each year – last year it was bagels, the year before that a HCB loaf. I also made Earl Grey & Orange ones for Waitrose a few years ago! This year I went with another English classic to hybridise them with, Chelsea buns, which are my dad’s fave.

Chelsea buns are pretty much an English version of a cinnamon roll – a yeasted dough rolled very thinly, covered with butter and caster sugar and currants, rolled into tight swirls and baked all nestled together. I’ve had a few buns from bakeries in London before and usually there’s little to no spice involved here! I think the key feature of a good bun though is having thin layers of dough which you can satisfyingly unreel as you eat, like a little ritual. To achieve this effect, I laminated the dough with some filling inside before rolling up, giving me a croissant-like bun.

The ‘hot cross’ aspect here is brought in by using mixed spice in the dough and filling along with cinnamon and mixed dried fruits (which includes currants, candied lemon and orange peel). Usually a hot cross bun has a flour and water paste piped over before baking but I thought that might mess with the layers of dough here. Instead I opted for a simple cream cheese icing piped onto the cooled buns post-bake. The first time I made them, they were demolished by my housemates and me in a few days – just remember that when they’re a few days old and getting a bit dry, zapping one in the microwave for 20-30 seconds helps a lot!

Hot Cross Chelsea Buns

Ingredients

For the paste:

2 tbsp white plain flour or bread flour
90 ml water
200 ml milk (you can use a non-dairy one here)
50 g rapeseed oil (or another neutral oil)

For the dough:

250 g white bread flour
200 g wholemeal bread flour
50 g granulated sugar
1 tsp salt
2 tsp easy-bake ('instant') dried yeast
1 tsp mixed spice
zest of 1 orange

For the filling:

2 tsp mixed spice
2 tsp ground cinnamon
150 g light brown sugar
80 g unsalted butter, melted*
150 g mixed dried fruits**

For the frosting:

2 tbsp cream cheese
icing sugar (powdered sugar)

Instructions

Make the paste:

Combine the plain flour and water, then pour into a small saucepan and stir over a medium heat until the mixture thickens into a paste. Take it off the heat then pour in the oil and milk - leave to cool to lukewarm.

Make the dough:

Place the wholemeal and white flours, sugar, salt, yeast, mixed spice and orange zest into a large bowl. Stir them together then make a well in the centre of these dry ingredients. Pour the contents of the small saucepan (the paste and liquids) into the well then stir everything together to make a dough.
Tip the dough onto a work surface dusted with flour and knead for 6 to 8 minutes until smooth and slightly sticky, adding flour as needed.
Place the dough back into the bowl and cover it with clingfilm. Leave it in a warm place for 2 hours. The dough should have doubled in size.

Mix the filling:

In a small bowl mix the mixed spice, ground cinnamon and light brown sugar together.

Make the rolls:

Lightly flour a work surface and tip the risen dough out onto it. Lightly flour the dough and roll it out into a 15 x 26 inch (35 x 65cm) rectangle. Spread half of the melted butter over the surface of the dough. Evenly sprinkle on half of the spiced sugar and press it into the dough by rolling it over it gently. Fold the dough into thirds like a business letter. (see bottom of post for a .gif to explain).
Roll this out again into a 15 x 26 inch (35 x 65cm) rectangle. Spread the remaining butter over the surface, evenly sprinkle on the remaining spiced sugar and all of the mixed dried fruit. Starting at the short edge of the rectangle, roll the dough up tightly into a log.
Cut the dough into 12 even pieces. Place cut side-up into an oiled 9x13-inch baking tin. Cover with a clean tea towel and leave somewhere warm for 30 minutes to almost double in volume.
Meanwhile preheat the oven to 180^oC (350^oF).
Once risen, bake the rolls for 20-25 minutes until golden brown around the edges. Leave to cool.

Make the frosting:

Place the cream cheese into a medium bowl and mix with enough powdered sugar to make a thick-ish glaze that will hold its shape when piped. If it's not thin enough you can mix in water a dribble at a time to get the right consistency. Transfer the mixture to a sandwich bag, snip of the tip of one of the corners, and use as a piping bag to pipe cross-shapes over the rolls.

Recipe Notes

*replace the butter in the filling with melted vegan margarine or just more rapeseed oil to make the recipe suitable for vegans
** in the UK 'mixed dried fruit' is usually a mixture of sultanas, raisins, candied lemon peel and candied orange peel. If you can't get that mix you can just use straight up raisins, currants or sultanas.

Tahini Caramel Apple Tart

Thanks to Food Network UK for sponsoring this post and to you guys for supporting me!

At uni for the past two years I’ve been lucky enough to live with two friends from my course – we all study Food Science & Nutrition. I assumed, going into this course, that all the other people I’d be studying with would be as interested in cooking as I am, but it’s become abundantly clear this is not the case, haha. Fortunately, my mates are definitely on the same level of interest as me, so we’ve made some pretty epic meals together. We are also OBSESSED with cooking TV shows.

Their favourite is Chopped because it’s the most ridiculously dramatic cooking show. Although I do find that show hilarious, I prefer the uhh.. traditional-style cooking shows, like re-runs of Nigella. My absolute fave though is Ina Garten – I’ve been watching ‘Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics’ on Food Network recently where she cooks up an array of simple, accessible recipes. It’s one of the most beautifully filmed shows and her recipes are so good – especially in this series because it’s all about easy recipes which are my priority at uni, really. A cool fact I didn’t realise until talking to someone the other day is that Ina Garten actually used to work at the White House before building her own majorly successful food company (including a food emporium, cookbooks, TV shows and magazine columns) – such an inspiration.

Inspiring women like Ina are part of why it feels so great to work in the ‘Food World’ as a female – I am incredibly lucky that I’ve found a job in an industry filled with supportive, entrepreneurial women who all help each other out whilst running successful businesses. As we all know, being a woman isn’t always the *easiest* thing but I think we’re moving in a positive direction. Apparently 77% believe there’s no limit to what they can achieve¹ – a sentiment I agree with myself!

I’ve been thinking about this French Apple Tart ever since I saw Ina make it – I’m usually not a tart kind of person because lining a pastry tin is not my idea of fun, but this recipe is SO simple, there’s no faffing around. You roll out a flaky pastry into a rectangle, top with sliced apples and sugar and bake. Now, Ina brushes the apples with a apricot jam glaze (a trick my mum always uses too) but I opted for a tahini caramel instead – drizzled over the tart whilst still warm. It’s a little bit nutty and isn’t too sweet but if you’re daunted by caramel making you can always stick with the jam if you want!

Tahini Caramel Apple Tart

Recipe adapted from Ina Garten

Serves 8-12

Ingredients

For the pastry:

2 cups (240g) plain white (all-purpose) flour
1 tbsp granulated sugar
½ tsp salt
¾ cup (165g) unsalted butter, cold, cubed
up to 1/2 cup (125ml) ice water

For the caramel:

1/3 cup (65g) granulated sugar
2 tbsp water
2 tbsp (30g) unstalted butter
generous pinch salt
½ tsp vanilla extract or vanilla bean powder
1 tbsp tahini
4 tbsp milk

For the top:

3 to 4 Bramley apples peeled and cored
¼ cup (50g) granulated sugar
2 tbsp unsalted butter cut into little cubes

Instructions

Make the pastry:

Place the flour, salt, sugar and butter into the bowl of a food processor. Pulse to cut the butter in – you want a mealy mixture with a few pea-sized lumps of butter remaining. Drizzle in the water (start with 4 tablespoons) and pulse in, adding more water a tablespoon at a time if needed. The mixture should be moist enough so that if you squeeze some together, it’ll stick.
Tip the pastry mixture out onto a piece of cling film. Pat together with your hands into a rectangle then wrap and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Meanwhile make the caramel:

Place the sugar and water in a large saucepan (silver/white ones a best so you can see the colour change). Place over a medium heat on the stove and stir just until the sugar dissolves then stop stirring. Let the mixture cook, tilting and swirling the pan, until it has reached an even, golden colour.
Turn the heat all the way down, add in the butter, salt and vanilla. Let that butter melt a bit before picking the spoon back up and mixing it in. Once smooth, add the tahini and milk and stir through until smooth. Take off the heat and set aside.

Rolling and baking:

Once the pastry has rested, preheat the oven to 200^oC (400^oF).
Cut the apples in half and then slice into half-moons about ¼-inch (5mm) thick.
Cut a piece of baking paper to fit a large baking tray. Unwrap the pastry, place onto the baking paper and dust with flour. Roll the pastry out into a rectangle slightly smaller than the piece of baking paper. Trim the edges so they are straight then transfer the pastry (on the baking paper) onto the baking tray.
Place overlapping slices of apples diagonally down the middle of the tart and continue making diagonal rows on both sides of the first row until the pastry is covered with apple slices. Sprinkle with the 1/4 cup of sugar and dot with the butter.
Bake for 35-45 minutes until the tart is dark golden around the edges and the apples have coloured slightly. Drizzle with the caramel (you may need to re-warm it over a low heat on the stove to get it drizzle-able again) then allow to cool before slicing and serving.

Recipe Notes

if you want to speed this recipe up, you can use a block of puff pastry or shortcrust pastry in place of making your own.

Barefoot Contessa: Back to Basics airs Tuesday-Thursday 6-7am on Food Network UK

¹ – research statistics provided by Food Network UK

Carrot, Pine Nut, & Parmesan Skillet Pizza with Creamy Roasted Garlic Sauce

Although I consistently love tomato sauce on pizza, I do like to have a few alternatives up my sleeve to keep pizza night interesting. Some previous faves have been basil pesto (obvs because are you even a student if you don’t like pesto??) and blended sweetcorn (inspo from Homeslice in London!).

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