Bake cold-risen Mardi Gras buns. With a cold-risen dough, it is easier to serve completely freshly baked Mardi Gras buns whenever you feel like it.
The cold proofing also makes the dough in the Mardi Gras buns taste even better. Fill your cold-risen Mardi Gras buns with real vanilla cream and dip them in chocolate ganache. See also the baking tip on how to ensure that the vanilla cream does not run out of the Mardi Gras buns. If you want to try one of our other recipes for Mardi Gras buns, you can see them here.
Dough
150 g of unsalted butter
150 g of full-fat milk
10 g of dry yeast
40 g of caster sugar
2 eggs + 1 egg for brushing
½ teaspoon ground cardamom
450 g Wheat Flour
4 g of salt
Vanilla cream
3 egg yolks
25 g cornstarch
45 g of caster sugar
1 vanilla pod
1 tsp. sugar
300 g milk
Chocolate ganache
100 g dark chocolate
100 g of cream
1 small handful of almonds for topping
Here’s how you do it
Day 1
- Dough for cold-risen Mardi Gras buns
- Put butter in a pan and melt it over low heat. and then pour it into a bowl and add the milk. Check that the temperature is no more than a little finger warm. Otherwise, let it cool a bit.
- Add yeast and sugar and stir until the yeast is dissolved.
- Add eggs, cardamom, wheat flour and salt to the dough and knead until it is smooth, and shiny and leaves the sides of the bowl. It takes about 10 minutes on a mixer. As the dough is very rich in butter and eggs, it will come together quickly, but this does not mean that it has been kneaded enough – it is important that the dough has a strong gluten structure, otherwise, the dough will crack during baking and the vanilla cream will run out.
- Put the dough in a bucket and let it rise at room temperature for 45-60 minutes until it shows activity. Refrigerate the dough until the next day.
The vanilla cream
- Put the egg yolks, cornstarch and sugar in a bowl and beat it together with a whisk – it will be firm at first, but will soon clump together and become wet again.
- Split the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape out the seeds. Press the vanilla beans together with a teaspoon of sugar.
- Put milk, vanilla bean and vanilla sugar in a pan and heat it to just below the boiling point.
- Pour the hot milk into the egg mixture while stirring.
- Pour it all back into the pan and cook the vanilla cream, stirring constantly, for a few minutes as it thickens.
- Put the vanilla cream in a bowl and cover tightly with cling film on top of the cream. Refrigerate until the next day.
Day 2
- Turn the dough out onto a very lightly sprinkled table.
- Roll it out to a rectangle of approx. 35 x 45 cm and cut the dough into squares of approx. 8×8 cm.
- Put a good teaspoon of vanilla cream on each dough square.
- Close the Mardi Gras buns by folding each corner into the middle. Pinch the dough together at the joints and form the dough into a ball. You can see how the Mardi Gras buns are closed and shaped in the video below.
- Place the Mardi Gras buns on two baking trays lined with baking paper.
Note! The Mardi Gras buns may seem a little small, but they need to rise and also rise during baking so that they get a good size.
- Cover the buns with cling film and a cloth and let them rise for 2 hours at room temperature.
- Turn on the oven at 200 degrees conventional oven (above/below heat) and let it heat up well.
- Place a baking sheet at the bottom of the oven and boil a litre of water in an electric kettle (this must be used to create steam in the oven so that the Lenten buns do not crack).
- Whisk together an egg and brush the Mardi Gras buns.
- Place one sheet of Mardi Gras buns in the centre of the oven. Pour boiling water into the lower, empty baking tray and close the oven so that the steam stays inside the oven.
- Bake the Mardi Gras buns for 6 minutes. Take out the tray with water and bake the buns for 6 minutes until golden.
- Repeat the process with the second plate of buns. Leave your cold-risen Mardi Gras buns to cool on a wire rack.
- Put the almonds on a baking sheet and toast them in the oven for 5 minutes. Leave to cool and chop in a mini chopper or with a bread knife.
Chocolate ganache
- Chop the chocolate well. Put the cream in a pan and heat it to boiling point.
- Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and let it stand briefly.
- Stir in the centre of the mixture with a dough scraper.
- When the ganache starts to gather a little, you can move it out into the bowl and stir the entire ganache homogeneously.
- Dip the cooled, cold-risen Mardi Gras buns into the chocolate ganache and top with chopped, toasted almonds. Serve and enjoy.
Note: If you can’t eat all your cold-raised Mardi Gras buns on the same day, they can be frozen before being dipped in chocolate ganache.
Baking tip – this is how you prevent the cream from running out of the Mardi Gras buns
The filling must remain inside the Mardi Gras buns! If you want to avoid your cream and remonce flowing out of your Mardi Gras buns, it is first and foremost important that the dough is kneaded enough! A strong gluten structure ensures that the dough stays together when it rises – also during baking when the crust becomes harder and harder.
The dough for your Mardi Gras buns must not be too dry. A dry dough is difficult to gather and stick together in the joints. The Mardi Gras bun dough must be soft and delicious – therefore avoid adding more flour to the dough than indicated in the recipe, and sprinkle only a thin layer of flour on the table when the dough is rolled out.
It is also important that you follow the rising times specified in the recipe. If the dough, and later the folded buns, are not allowed to rise sufficiently, there is a great risk that the buns will crack during baking and the filling will run out.
Last but not least, your Shrovetide buns can be baked with a little steam at the start of baking, where they will finish rising in the oven. The steam ensures that the Mardi Gras buns do not form a crust until they have finished rising – and thus they avoid cracking.
