Chocolate chip buns
These are world's best homemade chocolate chip buns you'll ever make. They're super easy to make, extremely fluffy, soft, light, not too sweet and highly addictive. Made with ingredients you probably have on hand. Enjoy the chocolate buns for breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea/ coffee or as a snack.
Servings: 10 chocolate buns
Equipment
- Parchment paper
- Baking sheet
- Bowl
- 2 jars
- spoon
- Knife
- Pastry brush
- Kitchen towel
- cling film
- Box grater
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons sugar
- 250 ml (8.5 fl.oz/ 1 cup) milk plus extra for brushing the buns before and after baking
- 500 g (17.6 oz/ 4 cups + 2 tablespoons) plain flour (all purpose flour)
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 medium egg
- 80 g (1/3 cup/ 2.8 oz) butter
- 4 teaspoons dry yeast
- lemon zest from ½ lemon
- 200 g (7.1 oz) chocolate chips
Instructions
- Warm milk in the microwave. Pour half of the milk in a jar. Put the butter in the remaining milk in the jar and melt in the microwave. Stir occasionally until butter has melted. You could also use a pot and warm the milk on the stove like I did in this apple doughnut recipe.
- In the meantime add 2 tablespoons flour, 1 tablespoon sugar and yeast to the jar with lukewarm milk. Stir well and let the mixture stand for 10 minutes. The yeast mixture will become foamy and bubbly after 10 minutes. Remove the jar with milk – butter mixture from the microwave and let cool. Next zest the lemon. All you have to do is cut a parchment paper of the same length as the box grater, place it on the side that isn't finger friendly and grate. Using a parchment paper makes it easier to remove the zest from the parchment paper. On top of that you won't be having any lemon zest lying around.
- Put the flour, the remaining sugar, lemon zest, egg and salt in a bowl. Then pour in the yeast – sugar mixture. Start mixing, while adding the lukewarm milk – butter mixture slowly. It’s very important that milk and butter mixture is lukewarm and not hot before using it.
- Knead the dough very well, until you see bubbles in the dough or until it’s no more sticking on the walls of the bowl. I normally knead my dough like this: If I’m kneading it with the hand mixer, I knead the dough for about 8 minutes at low speed and then for 5 minutes on medium high speed. With the kitchen machine I knead the dough for 7 minutes at low speed (speed 1, on Bosch kitchen machine) and for 3 more minutes at medium high speed (speed 3). With the hands, I knead the dough for about 10 to 12 minutes. If you’re using a heavy duty kitchen machine, please knead your dough for maximum 7 minutes in total. Otherwise you will be overworking the dough.
- Using one hand, remove the dough from bowl and grease with 1 teaspoon sunflower oil. Put the dough back, turn in well so that it is completely covered with oil. Cover with cling film and then with kitchen towel. Let rise in a warm place for about 1 hour or until dough has doubled in size. After 1 hour remove the dough from the bowl and put it on a working surface. There is no need to dust it.
- Gently flatten the dough with your hands. Since the dough is nicely kneaded, it doesn't stick. Therefore extra flour for dusting is not needed here. Put the chocolate chips/ drops in the middle of the flattened dough and carefully press them into the dough and then fold. Then shape it into a long baguette form. You want to retain the air bubbles in the dough intact so that you’ll have nicely fluffy, soft and light buns. Cut the baguette roll into approximately 10 equal rolls. Cut the roll in the middle first, it makes it easier to cut the rest of the rolls. Form the rolls into buns. If the chocolate chips will be coming out, just gently press them back in. Put the chocolate rolls on a baking sheet lined with a parchment paper. Gently arrange some chocolate chips on the outside of the buns, so that you will have good looking buns in the end. Cover with kitchen towel and let rise for another 30 minutes.
- In the meantime preheat the oven to 180°C (356 °F) with both up and low heat. After 30 minutes brush the chocolate yeast rolls with milk. Bake for 20 minutes or until nicely golden brown. Immediately after baking remove from the oven and brush once more with milk. enjoy!!