Your new favourite pastry: a fluffly brioche bun topped with delicious vanilla custard, juicy blueberries and a crunchy streusel, the best snack for the autumn months when comfort is all we need.

Blueberry and Custard Buns

If you are in the UK you may have seen these on a trip to Gail’s, they are one of my favourites to have when I go there but I’ll be honest, they can be quite expensive… Gail’s, and my month budget, is where the inspiration has come from for these buns.

They are made with a very simple brioche base, which makes them super soft and fluffly, then they are topped with vanilla custard, sharp juicy blueberries and finally a crunchy streusel which adds the perfect amount of sugar to these buns.

So, what’s in these?

As it happens with many treats, these are incredibly simple, yet super delicious, all you’ll need to make them is:

• Milk
• Flour
• Yeast
• Sugar
• Eggs
• Butter
• Custard
• Blueberries

A few tips for success

• Use fresh or frozen blueberries – I’ve tried these with both and it works, frozen ones tend to keep their shape a bit better, but fresh ones also work great. Frozen blueberries are particularly good for when blueberries are not in season.
• Raise your dough in the oven – a great tip for raising dough, particularly in the colder months, is to raise it in the oven. Simply turn your oven temperature to the lowest setting (mine is 50 degrees celsius) for 2-3 minutes, it is important that the oven doesn’t reach that temperature! Then, turn it off and leave your dough in the oven, this will help it raise quicker and much more evenly than outside the oven.
• Shop bought custard is completely fine – I didn’t make my own custard, I find custard quite daunting and requires a lot of time, so I bought very good quality custard from the shop and used it for these, it worked great!
• Make the streusel first – this may sound like I am exaggerating, but keeping the streusel in the fridge so it solidifies will keep it from melting in the oven and losing its shape.

Blueberry and Custard Brioche Buns

Ingredients:

• 200 ml of milk 
• 390 gr of flour 
• 7 gr of instant yeast
• 50 gr of sugar
• 1 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 30 gr of butter

For the filling:

• 250 ml of custard 
• 200 gr of blueberries
• 1 egg

For the streusel:

• 45 gr of cold butter
• 2 tablespoon brown sugar
• 2 tablespoon granulated sugar
• 55 gr flour
• A pinch salt

Method:

1. Start by making the streusel. Mix all the ingredients using your hands or a fork and create clumps. Put the mix in the fridge until you need it. This will guarantee that your streusel doesn’t melt in the oven.
2. Now move onto the brioche dough. In a pot, warm up the milk and allow the butter to melt in it making sure the milk doesn’t start boiling. Once the butter is melted, set aside to cool down, it doesn’t need to be cold, but you should be able to touch with without burning yourself.
3. In a large bowl, mix together the flour, yeast and sugar. Pour in the milk and butter mix followed by the egg and vanilla extract and mix using a spatula or wooden spoon until everything is combined and a dough is formed. I beat my egg separately to make mixing easier.
4. Flour a clean surface and your hands and knead the dough for 5 minutes until smooth. The dough should be sticky but easy to knead, if you find it sticks way too much to the surface or your hands, add flour gradually until it sticks but doesn’t leave any residue. Put the dough in a lightly greased bowl and let it rest for at least an hour or until doubled in size.
5. Once the dough has risen, put it on a floured surface and form a disk with it, cut it into 8 similar portions. For this, I would recommend weighting the dough and then dividing the weight by 8, so all your portions are the same. Mine were around 80 gr each.
6. Take each portion and roll it into a ball, then, using a rolling pin or your hands, press them down to form a thick disk of approximately 8 cm radius. Place each disk in a tray lined with baking paper making sure the buns don’t touch and allow to rise again for 30 to 45 minutes.
7. After they’ve risen, use a spoon or your fingers to make a well in the middle of the buns. The buns should still have a small edge around them. Make sure your well is not so deep that it breaks the dough. See pictures above for a visual representation of this.
8. Top each bun with equal portions of custard followed by the blueberries, then top them with the streusel.
9. Beat an egg and brush the exposed sides of each bun, this will give the buns a deeper golden colour when they are baking.
10. Cook the buns in a preheated oven at 180 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until they are golden, check them half way through and turn them if they seem more cooked on one side.
11. Allow them to cool down completely and sprinkle them with icing sugar if you want to.