Shrovetide Buns (Egg-free)

While it is pointless to whip up an egg-free dough for a bun filled with an egg-based custard, it makes sense if you remember that Shrovetide buns can also be jam-filled. For these I used extra margarine as well as extra milk to make up for the missing egg in the dough.

This is a wee bit late for the season this year, but here goes anyway..

Ingredients:
- 150 g (¹/₃ lb) margarine
- 1.5 dL (²/₃ cup) whole-milk
- 50 g (ca. 2 oz) fresh yeast
- 5 tbsp sugar
- 400 g (14 oz) wheat flour
filling:
- ca. 200 g (7 oz) raspberry jam
glazing:
- powdered sugar
- optional powdered cocoa
- water

The margarine and milk was heated on low heat in a small pot until the margarine had melted, then transferred to a large bowl and allowed to cool until lukewarm. The fresh yeast was crumbled into the lukewarm milk-and-margarine, then the sugar was stirred in followed by the flour. The dough was kneaded for some minutes, then covered and left to rise for 1 hour.

After rising, the dough was rolled out to approximately 40 x 45 cm (ca. 15" x 18") and cut in 12 pieces. A largish tsp of raspberry jam was placed in the middle of each piece of dough and the dough was folded around the jam and the resulting buns were placed on a baking sheet lined with baking paper. The buns were then covered and left to rise on the sheet for 45 minutes.

The buns were baked for 10 minutes at 225 C (450 F) - and it appears I need to improve my technique for closing the buns as some jam ran out onto the baking sheet during baking.

The buns were served with a freshly applied glazing made by stirring together water and powdered sugar - approximate amounts (for one bun): 1 tsp water + 6 tsp powdered sugar (for a nice chocolaty variation substitute 1 or 2 tsp of the powdered sugar with powdered cocoa).