I'm trying to make chelsea buns like the ones from my home town as I no longer live there so can't get them very often. I've done quite a bit of experimenting and while I'm quite a way off, I have created a bun I am very happy with except for one thing: a gooeyness in between the swirled up layers.
This is obviously something to do with the filling but I can't work out what. All Chelsea recipes use butter, brown sugar and fruit for the filling but the butter and sugar just disappear during cooking, leaving dry bread. In the chelseas from the bakery, there is a thin layer of brown stickiness in-between the rolled up layers. Not much, but enough to be making the buns moist and sweet on the inside.
Does anyone have any idea how to achieve this? It's as if the buns haven't fully cooked in between the layers, leaving a slightly sticky inside, a bit like undercooked dough. I can't figure out what is being put in the filling to achieve this.
I'm trying to get hold of a picture of one of these buns to better illustrate what I mean and will upload as soon as I get it.
Thanks.
EDIT
I've now added the below pictures.
See how the chelsea bun from the bakery (top pic) is still moist in the layers between the rolls and the bread itself looks soft and bendy.
Contrast that with my bun and you can see the butter/sugar mixture I layered up in the middle has disappeared with cooking. It looks dried out. On top of that,
the bun itself seems dry in comparison as you can see it has cracked upon unrolling whereas the bakery bun has not.
Does anyone have any ideas on how to achieve this moistness both in the dough and in between the layers??
**I've just had a thought – all chelsea recipes call for bread flour. Is it possible that plain flour would produce a softer, moister bun?
Best Answer
Traditional recipes don't seem to aim for goo, and most of the ones you can buy aren't gooey (UK, limited sample of sources). You can try increasing the quantity of spiced, sugared butter (or even mixing a little milk and/or egg in with it) but you may be better off adapting that aspect of another recipe that is supposed to be gooey. You ought to be able to find a cinnamon roll recipe (for example) that states it has such a filling, but swap the cinnamon in the filling for mixed spice. I've been thinking more about this, and about pains au raisin, which tend to have your goo in them. According to Wikipedia they use crème pâtissière.
From my limited experience making Chelsea buns, adjusting the cooking time/temperature won't help - you still want even the middle ones to be cooked through.