Halloween is all about sweet treats and my kids LOVE a sticky bun. These jam filled faces are super fun to create and when you do, really go for it! There are tons of different spooky sweets available for decorating, like spiders and even teeth that would look great. I’ve gone for chocolate eye balls and jelly worms (actually snakes but I think they look more like worms) to make them a little creepy but mostly just funny mummy faces.
As always with bread making of any kind the dough takes time. Don’t be put off by the start to finish time of these buns because a lot of that time will be spent doing whatever you like while your dough proves up. You only need to be around for making the dough, shaping your faces (the most fun part!), baking and decorating.
Go to town and experiment with different face shapes and expressions, and most of all have fun with what you create!
Halloween Mummy Buns
Notes
This recipe uses and enriched dough, that means butter, milk and eggs, and because of that expect the rising to take a little longer than your standard dough.
Be sure to microwave your milk a little, just enough to take off the chill from the fridge.
This recipe will make 6 Mummy Buns
Difficulty: Medium
My Kitchen Temperature: 22°C/72°F
Start to finish: 4.5 hours
Ingredients
For the Dough
250g Strong white bread flour
40g Caster Sugar
4g Salt
25g Room temperature butter
75g Room temperature milk
1 Medium Egg
15g Fresh yeast or 8g dry yeast
For the filling
100g Raspberry jam
50g Desiccated coconut
To decorate
Chocolate eye balls
Jelly worms or snakes
Desiccated coconut
70g Icing Sugar
100g Chocolate
100g Raspberry Jam
Method
Making the dough
1. Weigh your milk into a jug and put in the microwave just enough to take off the chill from the fridge. Add the yeast and mix to dissolve.
2. Weigh your flour, salt and sugar into a large mixing bowl and stir it all together. Break up your butter into pieces and add it to the bowl too.
3. Pour the yeasty milk into the dry mixture and add the egg. Mix everything together with your dough scraper until it comes together into a dough.
4. Knead your dough well on an un-floured work surface for 8-10 minutes, then shape into a rough ball and place back into your bowl. Clingfilm the bowl and leave it on the kitchen side to rise up at room temperature for 90 minutes.
5. While your dough rests weigh out your jam and coconut ready for the filling.
6. When it comes to shaping your mummy faces you’ll need something to hold the shape of the holes for your eye balls to fit in later, and for the mouth too. Roll 12 balls of tin foil the same size as your chocolate eye balls and 6 pieces for the mouths.
7. Cut a piece of parchment paper large enough to line a 35cm x 25cm tray and draw on 6 equally spaced ovals with a pencil. Turn over the paper so you can see the pencil lines through the paper underneath.
Filling and cutting the dough
8. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a lightly floured surface, then flour the sticky side of the dough too. Roll the dough out with a rolling pin into a large portrait rectangle, around 50cm by 30cm. Feel free to dust with a little flour as you go if the dough becomes a bit sticky.
9. Use a dough scraper to evenly spread your jam over the bottom half of your dough making sure to leave a rim around the edge, then fold the dough in half from the top with the jam inside. Squeeze all round the edges to seal the jam inside.
10. Roll out your dough again a little longer until it is a rectangle around 40cm long by 25cm. Hopefully the jam will be trapped inside, but don’t worry too much if a little escapes from round the edges
11. Now, cut the dough vertically into 6 equal strips, one for each mummy. If it’s not an exact rectangle before you do this, trim the wonky edges and keep the offcuts for later.
Constructing your mummy faces
12. One by one take a strip and cut it into four long ribbons, these will be your bandages. Pick up a ribbon and lengthen it with a good stretch from either end before laying them on your ovals as described below:
13. Use one ribbon to mark round the edge of the oval, overlapping the ends to make the oval complete.
14. Drape the second ribbon in a zig zag over the top third of the oval, working from left to right and back again until the top third is covered, nestle your two eye balls in between.
15. The third ribbon will cover the middle section of the face between the eyes and mouth. Drape it again like before, to cover the middle.
16. Cover the bottom of the face in the same way as the middle part, then wedge a piece of your mouth shaped tin foil in a gap between the layers.
17. Now if you have offcuts, cut them super thin and use them up as extra bandages filling gaps and giving a little more detail to the face.
Proving and baking
18. Cover your mummy faces very loosely with a layer of cling film and leave again to prove for 90 minutes.
19. Towards the end of your proving time, preheat the oven to 160°C Fan/320°F/Gas Mark 3
20. Bake your mummy buns for 12-15 minutes. To check if they are done take a peep underneath each bun, if they are golden on the base they are ready. Remove from the oven and cool on a wire rack.
Decorating
21. Mix up your icing sugar with 10g of water and put it in a piping bag either using a small tip nozzle or, if they are disposable like mine, cut a small hole in the tip. Melt your chocolate and put that in a piping bag too before finally putting your jam in a third bag. Have your coconut, worms/snakes and eye balls to hand.
22. Remove the tin foil eyes and mouths from your buns. Pipe the chocolate around the edges of the holes that are left and then in the hole itself. Use a finger to spread the chocolate evenly if you need to, and put the eyes in their sockets.
23. If you have worms or snakes, look for a few natural gaps between the bandages where you might be able to poke them in, or make your own holes with a skewer. Push the snakes or worms into the gaps.
24. Pipe lines roughly along the lines of the bandages on the face with the icing, and use the jam to fill a few gaps. Sprinkle over some desiccated coconut to finish.
