Baking with Elliott

Baking the world a sweeter place

Bread

Cinnamon Rolls

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Today I’ll be showing you how to make cinnamon rolls, my personal favourite baked good!

October is my birthday month, so I thought I’d make a few of my favourite baked goods – starting with this week’s recipe for cinnamon rolls.

These are easily my favourite baked good, it starts with a fluffy bread dough which is filled a cinnamon brown sugar filling and once baked, topped with a cream cheese icing. If you think the store-bought ones were good, wait until you try these.

Let’s get started, shall we?

Ingredients:

 

Bread:

500g Strong white bread flour.

50g Fresh yeast.

75g Butter.

75g Granulated sugar.

15g Milk powder.

1 Egg,

350ml Water (Luke warm).

 

Cinnamon Filling:

250gg Light brown sugar.

250g Butter.

25g Ground cinnamon.

 

Cream Cheese Icing:

85g Soft cheese.

60g Butter.

200g Icing sugar.

1 tsp Vanilla extract.

 

Methods:

Before you get into any baking, you’ll want to do some prep work first. Take the time to weigh up all the ingredients, lightly oil a bowl and get any equipment ready. When the time comes, preheat your oven to 180˚c/350˚f.

Bread:

To start on the bread dough, place the bread flour and salt into a bowl and give it a good mix to incorporate the two together.

 

Then place the remaining ingredients into the bowl, then mix them all together on a medium-low speed until a dough has formed. The dough should be soft, if it’s sticky, add a little flour.

 

Flour the work surface with a generous amount of bread flour and place the dough onto it. Knead the dough until the dough is smooth and elasticated. This takes around 5-7 minutes, depending on how well mixed it was in the first place.

Place the dough into the lightly oiled bowl, cover the bowl with cling-film and allow to proof/prove for around 60 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

 

While the dough is proving, you can make the cinnamon sugar filling. Into a bowl, place the butter, light brown sugar and cinnamon into a mixing bowl.

 

Beat all the ingredients together until they are all well combined, they should come together and form a cinnamony-brown coloured spreadable paste.

 

Once the dough has completed its first proof/prove, you’ll want to generously flour your worktop and place the dough onto it. You can then knock the dough back, this is just the process of removing the gases that had built up.

 

Now the dough has been knocked back, onto a floured worktop, bring the dough into a ball shape and start to roll the dough out using a rolling pin. The dough may resist being rolled out, this is a sign that the gluten has formed, this is a good sign. You’ll want to roll the dough out to roughly 40cm x 60cm.

 

Take the cinnamon sugar filling and spread it all over the dough, until you have a generous and level amount spread on the dough.

 

Take the long side of dough (the one nearest you) and start to roll it up. Start by rolling around 2cm of the dough into the first roll and then just continue the rolling until you’ve fully rolled the dough. Make sure that you keep each roll of the dough tight.

 

Slice the dough at around 1 inch for each roll. Do this for all your rolls.

 

Place the rolls into a deep sided tray, my first tray I got 6 into it but you may be able to get more-or-less depending on the size of your tray.

Cover the tray/s with cling film and allow to double in size. Prove for around 30-45 minutes – these will batch while baking, this is normal.

Bake in your preheated oven at 180˚c/350˚f for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown.

While your cinnamon rolls are baking in the oven, it’s the perfect time to make the cream cheese icing which will top the rolls.

Into your mixing bowl of choice, place the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar and vanilla extract. Beat together on a medium-high speed until all of the ingredients have become fully combined.

 

Once you have been mixing the cream cheese icing together for around 4-5 minutes, you should notice that the mixture goes from a yellowish colour to a lighter yellow but more white colour and should be much lighter and fluffier in consistency.

 

Set the cream cheese icing aside until its needed later.

Now that the cinnamon buns are baked, remove from the oven and allow to cool down, almost fully before you finish them off.

Once the cinnamon rolls are almost cooled down, you can start to add the cream cheese icing on to the buns. I start with a little on each and adding more as its needed – add as much as you’d like.

 

Then to finish the rolls, you’ll want to give them a light dusting of some ground cinnamon. This is optional but I really like cinnamon, so why not?

 

Well, that’s how you make cinnamon rolls my way. They are (fairly?) quick and easy to make, which makes them that bit more enjoyable. If you make too many, bake them off, then wrap them with some cling film and place into the freezer. You can keep the rolls in the freeze for up to 3 months, just make fresh cream cheese icing when you take them out.

 

That’s all for this week guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back next week with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my Instagram and Twitter. The YouTube video will be linked down below.

Custard Filled Doughnuts

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If you like filled doughnuts, this is the perfect recipe for you. Today I’m going to be showing you how to make custard filled doughnuts.

This recipe is one of my favourite thing’s I’ve made this year, by far. You get a soft and fluffy doughnut which is filled with a smooth and rich vanilla custard, what’s not to love about them seriously?

 

If custard isn’t your thing, I have a recipe for jam doughnuts.

 

These aren’t exactly hard to make, to be honest. They take a little time but they are totally worth it compared to the ones you can buy in the supermarkets or shops (I know of a local shop that sells a basic doughnut like this one for £4.50/$5.70… I think not). As with most bread goods, they require time because they must prove, this is where the gases can build up in the dough and make the bread lighter and taste better.

 

The custard filling can be made in advance, so if you want to make the custard the day/night before, that’s fine. If you haven’t made pastry cream before, don’t worry at all. The recipe I share for it is super simple to follow and it’s yet to fail me.

 

Anyway, let’s get on with the baking shall we?

 

 

Ingredients:

 

Doughnuts:

 

450g Strong white bread flour (not plain flour).

 

1 tsp Salt.

 

7g Dried yeast.

 

60g Butter.

 

1 Egg.

 

60g Granulated sugar.

 

150ml Milk, slightly warmed.

 

100ml Water, slightly warmed.

 

 

Custard filling:

 

500ml Whole milk.

 

1 tsp vanilla extract.

 

120g Egg yolks.

 

100g Granulated sugar.

 

60g Plain flour.

 

 

Methods:

Doughnuts:

Before you get into making your doughnuts or custard filling, you’ll want to do some prep work. Weigh up all your ingredients, get your deep fryer ready and get any equipment you intend on using ready.

 

To start on the doughnuts, you’ll want to get yourself a mixing bowl (I’m using my stand mixer, but you can use whatever you’d like to). Into the bowl, you’ll want to place the flour and salt, then give it all a good mix until its incorporated.

After that you can add the remailing ingredients, which are; dried yeast, butter, egg, granulated sugar, milk and water, then give it a good mix on a low speed. Once a dough starts to form, you’ll notice the dough is quite soft and may be a little sticky to the touch (this is okay, it’s an enriched dough).

Briefly knead the dough on a floured surface until its smooth and elasticated (this is a good sign that the gluten is working).

Place the dough into a lightly oiled bowl, I used vegetable oil but you can use any flavourless oil you have. Cover the bowl with cling film and allow to sit for around an hour or until its doubled in size (this is the first proof, allowing the yeast to do its thing and for the gluten to relax).

Once the dough has doubled in size, remove it from the bowl and knock it back on a lightly floured surface. The process of knocking the dough back is where you remove the gases that have built up in the dough while it was proving the first time around.

Weigh your dough and divide that amount by 10, this was you get a more accurate measurement per doughnut. You can eyeball it, but I prefer to be more accurate, so use digital scales if possible.

Round off your balls of dough and set them on individual pieces of greaseproof paper (which can go in the fryer), it makes them easier to move around later on. Place the dough balls onto a baking tray and loosely cover with cling film, you can then leave these for 30 -45 minutes or until they have gotten a little bigger (this is the second proof).

Now would be the ideal time to make your custard filling and have a clean down.

While you wait for the doughnut to proof, preheat your oil to 180˚c/350˚f. I recommend using a thermometer to ensure that the oil temperature is correct.

Once the doughnuts have proved and are ready, take two doughnuts and place them into the oil and fry off for around 60 seconds each side or until they are golden brown and baked through. Once removed from the fryer, place on kitchen roll to absorb some of the excess oil.

 

Custard:

 

To make the custard filling, get yourself a saucepan and pour in the milk and vanilla extract. Give it all a good mix then place on the heat on a medium heat until it almost reaches a boil.

Into a separate bowl, add in the egg yolks and granulated sugar and whisk the two together until they are lighter in colour and consistency. Once that’s achieved, add in the flour (I didn’t do this in the video but it still worked out and didn’t have much of an effect on the consistency or mouthfeel).

Once the milk mixture comes to almost a boil, take off the heat and add around 1/3 of the milk mixture and pour it over the egg/sugar mix, then whisk until combined (this is to temper the mixture, so it doesn’t curdle when we add the rest of the milk mix.

Add the remaining milk, whisking well. Then pour back into the saucepan and place back on the heat and whisk continuously until the mixture is thicker. You should be able to notice a difference as you whisk the mixture, the amount of time this takes depends on the heat you have it on really.

Once the custard is thick and ready, pour it into a shallow sided baking tray or bowl and cover with cling film to prevent a skin forming on top of the custard (the more you can spread out the custard, the quicker it will cool down).

 

Finishing:

 

Now that you have your doughnuts fried off and fully cooled down and your custard is fully cooled down, you can finish the doughnuts off.

 

Take the custard and place into a small bowl and whisk it up to help loosen the mixture a little, then place it into a piping bag fitted with a small piping tip.

 

Take your doughnuts and make a hole in the side using some like a skewer or a cake decorating tool (like I did), this makes a hole in the middle and on the side, so you can get the most custard filling on the inside, because who doesn’t want more filling?

Into a medium sized bowl, pour a generous amount of granulated while sugar (I have a 500g container which is purely for sugar that I roll the doughnuts in), then roll the doughnuts in, giving them a good coating of the sugar. For extra flavour, you could use vanilla sugar on the outside but that is being pretty extra.

That’s all for this week guys, I hope you enjoyed. If you did, don’t forget to share this recipe with your family and friends and enjoy it. I’ll be back next week with another blog post and YouTube video, so join me then. In the meanwhile, don’t forget to check out my Instagram and Twitter. The YouTube video will be linked down below!