Mar 03 2009
Love Buns!
There was a fair bit of swearing went on during the construction of these buns, but they turned out okay in the end!
Dougal made the buns, as they are bread-based. However, the bread is then accessorised with a big dollop of ricotta and a generous peppering of blueberries. The last time he made these, the blueberries kept bursting and popping out of the dough and generally rolling across the tabl, so this time he took the alternative suggestion of using frozen blueberries (which are much cheaper anyway!).
Let me tell you, the air turned blue when my boyfriend added them blueberries. As you might expect, with hindsight, the frozen berries completely killed any life in the dough.
He must have persevered though, as the next thing I knew, fabulous smells were wafting through the house and then I was presented with these beauties:
Dougal took most to work, but we also took some to our signing group and they were well received everywhere. It probably helps that they look so beautiful, to start with. The arty paper wrappers aren’t an affectation either; we just used normal paper muffin cases the first time and they stuck like made but with the baking parchment squares they were neat and eating-in-public friendly as you could like.
So perhaps forewarned is fore-armed, as it seems the frozen fruit weren’t such a problem after all. Which is a good thing, as there are more in the freezer!
There were two main problems with using frozen berries:
1) The dough instantly loses any elasticity when it gets cold. It’s like frozen chewing gum. :-(
2) The dough won’t rise up around the ingredients, so the buns were more open at the top than I would have liked.
I’m going to continue with these, and each time I’m going to get closer to how it *should* be done.
My sister’s organic bakery does blueberry cheese buns like that. I love the parchment wraps! So posh!