Issue 50 of Baked and Delicious has a recipe for Mini Chocolate Orange Brioches. Personally I think ruining chocolate with orange should be an arrestable offence. But with a couple of tweaks I though the recipe could be rescued…

The basic brioche recipe contains:

• 450g strong white bread flour
• 14g easy bake yeast
• 1tsp salt (tsp… oops… I read that as tbsp!)
• 2tbsp sugar
• 125g unsalted butter
• 4tbsp milk
• 4 eggs (I used EU medium)

It all starts with melting the butter into the milk on a low heat on the hob.

Meanwhile the dry ingredients go in the mixer bowl.

The eggs get whisked together, and then the melted butter&milk to mixed in.

This all gets added to the mixer bowl.

And the dough hook is used to mix and then knead everything together. The recipe says 5mins kneading by hand, but I did about that with the mixer, varying between speeds 1 to 3.

The dough goes into a bowl to rise, covered with cling film sprayed with oil to avoid any sticking issues.

After over an hour of rising it has indeed grown!

The original recipe makes 12 buns, in two batches of 6 (as that’s the size of the silicone dish they give you). I’m going for batches of 18, which is their 6 plus a muffin tray of 12. That worked out at about 50g per bun.

The aforementioned trays got an oil spraying to make it easier to remove the buns, and hopefully give the sides come colour.

The original recipe has a piece of chocolate in the middle of each bun. Plus there’s the orange issue… So I’m going for fruit and chocolate in the middle.

• Six of cherry and dark chocolate, due to excess cherries from Borough Market, with half a cherry on top
• Six of strawberry (for our garden!) with dark chocolate
• Six of raspberry with white chocolate

Basically I flattened each piece of dough, put the chocolate piece in the middle, put the fruit on top.

Then close them up and put them in the trays.

Then cover with oiled cling film to prove for another hour.

After proving they get an egg wash before going into a 200c fan oven for 15mins.

Then it’s onto the cooling rack.

The second batch was pretty much the same, but I used a twisting technique to close the buns better for proving, and I only cooked for 14mins.

And of course both of them got cooled under cloches, in case of cats :)

They taste really good when you get a bite with chocolate and fruit in. Unfortunately if you don’t get chocolate and fruit… you notice the excess salt :( If I did them again I’d certainly reduce the salt, but probably also up the sugar. Maybe 2tsp salt (10g) and 4tbsp (60g) sugar.

UPDATE: most people at work are happy with the taste… but my boss spat his out due to the salt! So, I think it’s best to go with 1tsp (5g) of salt, but still maybe up the sugar.