Apricot Sweet Buns

These buns are soft and delicious, with a delicious filling made with dried apricots. I love dried apricots, they are my favourite dried fruits, great for snacking or used in baked goods. And also delicious made into jam.

There's milk and sour cream used for the dough, which makes for a nice soft tender crumb. I've used vanilla extract instead of almond extract for the dough. To make the filling, bring dried apricots and water to a boil, then reduce the heat, and simmer for 20 minutes until the apricots are softened. Drain apricots, reserve some of the cooking liquid. Process the softened apricots in a food processor with 2 tablespoons of the cooking liquid, sugar, butter and ground cinnamon, and process until mixture has the texture of jam. I have however added only 1 tablespoon of the cooking liquid and 2 tablespoons of dark rum. Smells so lovely and tasted amazing. This filling would be a wonderful jam for bread and toast, it is quick to make, and can be made in small amounts. I'm making a batch of the filling soon just to enjoy with bread. Love it!

The dough is rolled out and spread  with the apricot filling, then fold in thirds in a rectangle, which is cut to 1 inch strips. Each strip is then twisted and tie in a knot, tucking ends under. Place on parchment lined baking sheets,  spaced well apart, then left to rise until puffed. Bake in a preheated oven until golden brown.

The buns are glazed with a brown sugar glaze of which I have omitted, preferring to brush the hot buns with melted butter instead.  These buns are soft and delicious with the apricot-rum filling. Especially good when eaten still slightly warm. 

This fabulous recipe is from The Bread Collection cookbook, page 65, and can also be found at Bake From Scratch website. There is a video where Brian Hart-Hoffman shows how he shape the strips of dough into knotted buns. 

This post is linked to Cookbook Countdown #48

Banana Chocolate Espresso Swirl Muffins

These muffins are moist, soft, tender, chocolaty with an espresso kick and full of banana flavour. Not too sweet, well, I did reduce the sugar slightly (from 150gm to 120gm). Recipe makes 8 jumbo sized muffins, but I have used the regular sized muffins and got 12.

Soft, tender crumb. Great with either coffee, tea or milk! Delicious muffins!


Recipe is from the book "The Bread Collection" by Brian Hart Hoffman, pg 42, and also be found at Bake From Scratch website.

The changes I've made was to reduce the sugar to 120gm and bake in a regular sized muffin pan, which makes 12 regular muffins.

I'm linking this post with Cookbook Countdown #35 

Chives and Cheddar Parker House Round Rolls

Harvested some Chinese Garlic Chives (Kuchai), to make this soft and fluffy rolls, Chives and Cheddar Parker House Rolls. The actual recipe is called Dill and Gruyere Parker House Round Rolls, from The Bread Collection by Brian Hart Hoffman. I did not have any dill but I do have Chinese Garlic Chives. Gruyere is not easily available so I have used Cheddar instead.

There's butter, milk and eggs in the dough. The dough is slightly sticky but it was manageable, just as the book says. After the first rise, the dough is divided into round balls. I've made half a recipe which makes 12 rolls. There's a small cube of plain butter as a filling for each roll. I have however added some chopped chives, garlic powder and a pinch of salt mixed into the softened butter, then refrigerate until set, cubed and used as the filling. Brush the risen rolls with some melted butter before they go into the oven.

Brush with some melted butter again as soon as the rolls are out of the oven. I have omitted the sprinkling of salt over the rolls. 

These rolls are so fluffy soft! Of course, the butter filling gets melted and this makes the rolls even more buttery. These would be great with some soup, but I love eating them plain with just a cup of hot tea! 

The full recipe can be found here.

I'm linking this post with Cookbook Countdown #35