Apple and Blackberry Buns

These are delicious warm and a perfect use for seasonal fruit! We have made them with apple and blackberries but you really can fill them with anything you like.

Ingredients
For Dough
500g Strong White Flour

300ml Warm Milk
1 Egg
1tsp Sugar
7g Fast Acting Yeast
1tsp Salt

For Filling
1 Handful of Blackberries
2 Sharp Eating Apples peeled and diced (we like granny smiths or pink ladies for this)
2tsp Cinnamon
100g Demerara Sugar

Start by making the dough, this is easiest in a food mixer with a dough hook attached. However by hand is fine, just get stuck in!

1. Combine all the dry ingredients making sure that the yeast and salt do not touch initially
2. Add the egg 
3. Add the milk slowly (you may not need all of this) mixing all the time. You should end up with a soft dough that's not too sticky
4. Kneed for 10 minutes
5. Cover and leave to rise for an hour or until it has doubled in size
6. Knock back the dough and roll into a rectangle about 1cm thick
7. Sprinkle evenly with sugar and cinnamon 
8. Spread fruit all over
9. Roll tightly up into a long roll
10. Cut into approx. 10 slices
11. Place on to a baking tray with a slight gap between to allow room to grow
12. Heat oven to 200ºC/180ºC fan/gas 6
13. Cover with a towel and leave for half an hour to rise
14. Bake for 20-25 minutes
15. Enjoy!

Win Tickets to the Bakewell Baking Festival!

Next month it is the first ever Bakewell Baking Festival, celebrating and devoted to the wonderful world of baking at the home of the Bakewell Pudding. We met the organisers at the Cake and Bake Show recently and were wowed by what they had arranged. We are going along with our kids as it looks like an amazing day out for all.

What's On:-

• Star Bakers, including Edd Kimber and Stacie Stewart
• Baking Demonstrations 
• Competitions 
• Raw Baking 
• Mad Hatter's Tea Party 
• Children's Zone 
• Artisan Bread Making 
• Healthy Baking with Edwina Currie 
• Fanny & Jonny Craddock 
• Tea Appreciation 
• Vintage Market 
• Vintage Bus Rides 
• Mr Darcy Custard Pie Fight and lots more all included in the ticket price!

Better still if you hop over to our Facebook page you will see we have a competition to win two adult tickets for the day! Best be quick though it closes on 25th May 2013.

National Poetry Day

Last Thursday was National Poetry Day, I love poetry and have enjoyed reading through the winners of this years Foyle Young Poets award. I thought I would share this with you as I feel the simple language is evocative of many childhoods. It has an underlying sadness to it mixed with nostalgia and love, amazing. 

Baking by Phoebe Boswall

Smells of baking remind me of you.

Your red apron, my small striped one with the torn pocket.
Your soft stretched skin, fingers kneading dough
into a ball. My fat floury hands
grasped for your amber necklace,
Quick, Phoebe, the oven!

You played with flavours,
made little blobs of buttery dough on the tray
Your warm kitchen, my safe haven.

You taught me your language:
bicarbonate of soda, self-raising flour, vanilla extract,
millilitres of milk, grams of sugar:
caster, muscovado, granulated.

Now your apron hangs empty on the peg.
I wear it from time to time; mine with the torn pocket
doesn't fit anymore.

If you would like to win a copy of 101 Poems for Children by Carol Ann Duffy you can enter the competition here