Pokemon Go Buns
An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott
Makes about 12-14 buns
Preparation time: 40 minutes plus 1 hour 15 minutes resting time
Cooking time: 20 minutes
- 3.5 cups bread flour
- 2 teaspoons instant dried yeast
- 250m/8.83fl ozs lukewarm water
- Yellow gel food colouring
- 3 tablespoons honey
- 1 tablespoon oil
- 1 teaspoon fine salt
- black and red food colouring
Step 1 - Mix the flour and yeast together. Add the yellow colouring into the water and mix in with the flour and knead. After a minute add the honey and oil and keep kneading until elastic in texture. Place in a bowl and cover with cling film and place in a warm area and allow to double in size. I set it above a bowl of hot water and changed the water 3 times once the water got cold.
Step 2 - Line a 20x20cm/8x8inch square tin with high sides (if you don't have a tin with high sides, then add two layers of brown paper going about 10cms/4inches up the side - the high sides make sure that the ears brown but the rest of the buns don't). Knock back the dough and add in salt. Roll out into a sausage and lightly flour a clean surface. Cut the ends off the sausage (you'll use these pieces for the ears) and then divide the dough into 10 or 12 pieces. You can make unfilled rolls by rolling them into balls on the counter. This is a technique that I picked up that makes sure that there are no seams or cracks on the surface. It takes practice though and the surface has to have some sort of stickiness to it to roll it into a round.
Or if you are filling it, allow the dough to rest for 10 minutes and then roll out into a circle and fill with a heaped teaspoon of peanut butter, Nutella, grated cheese or I used Speculoos spread. Do the same technique rolling it up and making sure that there are no seams.
Step 3 - Allow to rise in a warm place for 15 minutes. Then roll out the last two rolls and then cut out the ears. You will cut out strips about 3/4 of an inch long. Adhere them to the buns. You don't need these to rise again. Bake for 18 minutes.
Step 4 - When cooling, take a little black colouring gel and draw in the eyes, nose and smile using a fine paintbrush. Then paint on red circles for the cheeks using red gel colouring and a fine paintbrush.