heenie's food blog

                                                                This is a story of love at first sight. Once upon a time an amature cook was browsing and accidentally met a familiar recipe that made her smile. She knew it would be worth her time and effort. Oh well! I admit it….referring yourself as third person is pretty silly. Anyways, bumping into this recipe was a pleasant surprise… soft, golden, not-so-sweet swirl buns oozing with semi sweet chocolate overload kinda hypnotized me. Call me crazy but food does effect me in strange ways.

                                                                                                    The yeasty dough is gonna be very soft and a little sticky too but don’t worry it is manageable. The process of rolling, filling and shaping the buns is just like we do cinnamon rolls. The idea of baking them in a muffin tin is awesome… even sizes and exact serving portions.                                                                                                

ingredients: (12 buns)

for dough:

1/2 cup milk, lukewarm

1/4 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp instant yeast

1 egg, at room temperature

2 cups flour ( plus more for rolling)

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbsp butter at room temperature ( plus additional for greasing muffin pan)

for filling:

3 tbsp butter, at room temperature)

1/4 cup sugar

225 gm roughly chopped semi sweet chocolate

pinch of salt

3/4 tsp cinnamon powder (optional)

1 egg, slightly beaten with 2 tsp milk for egg wash

method:

prepare dough: 

Whisk together milk and yeast and a tsp of sugar (from 1/4 cup of sugar mentioned in ingredients list) and let stand for a 3-4 minutes. Add egg and sugar to this mixture and whisk well. Combine salt and flour is a large bowl and gradually add egg mixture and mix well.Add butter and mix well until incorporated. Knead for 10 minutes.  If you have a stand mixer use dough hooks. I have an electric hand mixer with dough hooks and it works well too. The dough would be sticky and messy and you might question the proportions of ingredients. But don’t worry it will get firm after first proofing. Cover lightly and let it rise for at least an hour or until double in volume.

Prepare the filling:

Combine chocolate, salt, sugar and cinnamon ( if using) in a food processor and pulse at short intervals until chocolate is finely chopped with some parts almost powdery. Add butter and pulse machine until it is well mixed. If you don’t have a processor, grate the chocolate and mix all filling ingredients well. Set this mixture aside.

Generously butter a standard 12 muffin tin and set aside.

form buns:

When the dough is doubled, turn it out onto a well floured surface and gently deflate with floured hands. Let it rest for 5 minutes. Then roll dough into a large rectangle approximately 12 x 20. Spread filling evenly over the dough, it might be clumpy and would probably seem like there is too much chocolate ( is that even possible?) for the volume of the dough, just do the best you can. Tightly roll the dough; it would be like a 12-13 inch long log. With a sharp knife cut 12 even pieces and place each piece in a prepared muffin cup. Loosely cover with plastic wrap and let rise for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 180 degree celcius.

Brush the buns with egg and milk mixture and bake for 15-20 minutes until buns are puffed and golden brown, rotating the pans halfway through the baking. Let cool completely in the pan.