Vegan Chelsea Buns

I decided to make some Chelsea buns.   So I looked round the net at a number of different recipes, did some jiggery-pokery and came up with the one below.  Instead of just using currants for the filling, I thought I'd make things a bit more colourful and used a mixture of yellow and black raisins, and chopped dried dates,cranberries, cherries and blueberries.

Vegan Chelsea Buns - makes about 14 smallish ones, or 9 larger ones.

Dough
120ml lukewarm soya milk
1 & 1/2 tsp dried yeast
50g caster sugar
250g strong bread flour

1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp mixed spice or pinch each of cinnamon, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, ginger
25g vegan margarine

Filling

20g vegan margarine, melted
50g brown sugar
1 tsp mixed spice (as above)
100g dried fruit (sultanas, or whatever you want)

Glaze:

2 tablespoons (30ml) caster sugar

1 tablespoon (15ml) soya milk
1/4 tsp Cinnamon

Method
 

Put the yeast and 1 tsp of the sugar into the warm milk, stir and leave somewhere warm for 10 minutes until frothy.  Sift the flour, the rest of the sugar, salt and spices into a large bowl and rub in the margarine with your fingers.  Make a well in the centre, add the yeasty milk and mix to form a soft dough.  Add a small amount of extra flour if it seems too wet.  

Lightly flour a clean surface and knead the dough til smooth and elastic.  Place the dough in a lightly oiled or dusted bowl and leave somewhere warm to rise, for about an hour or until doubled in size.

Grease a baking sheet, and in a small bowl mix together sugar, spice and dried fruit,for the filling.  Knock down the dough and roll out into a rectangle.  For smaller buns, make your rectangle approximately 20cm by 40cm.   For larger ones, try 30cm by 30cm.  Brush the dough with the melted margarine and sprinkle over the fruit and sugar mix. 








Roll up your dough,  starting from the longest edge (or either way if it's square).  





Stick down the edge with some soya milk or water.  Cut into 4cm wedges and place these into your greased baking sheet, leaving plenty of space between them.  Leave to rise for 20 mins.  Meanwhile, preheat oven to 200°C/400°F/Gas Mark 6.






Bake the buns in the warm oven for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Once the buns are out of the oven, make the glaze by heating the milk, adding the sugar and stirring until dissolved.  Before the buns are cool, transfer them to a wire rack and brush them with the glaze.

Verdict: I'm really pleased with how they turned out; everyone who tried one loved them.  However, I'm not sure putting in all that different fruit was really worth the expense; due to the spice flavouring, individual fruit flavours were not really discernible.  I'll definitely make these again, but will probably stick to sultanas next time.  I used a lot of cinnamon - probably more than my recipe stated- and my buns slightly resembled a cinnamon swirl.  Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but less could be used for a less strong-tasting bun.  Also I rolled out my dough to 20cm by 40cm, which made lots of smallish buns.  I'll try 30 by 30 next time, which reckon should give each bun another circle of dough, and would probably produce about 8-10 buns.