Strawberry cheesecake sweet buns

A summer strawberry classic, but with the addition of sweet cheese filling. And as my husband said, this sweet cheese filling does all the “hard work” here – the buns are delicious and it is hard to stop at just one… They are soft, wonderfully buttery and topped with a vanilla crumble. I always try to bake yeast buns with strawberries at least a few times during strawberry season. Everyone loves them and they always request a repeat :).

Makes 12 buns.

Ingredients for the yeast dough:

• 550 g strong white bred flour
• 80 g caster sugar
• ¾ teaspoon salt
• 10 g dried yeast or 20 g fresh yeast
• 80 g butter, melted
• 250 ml milk
• 2 large eggs

Mix the flour with the dried yeast (if using fresh yeast, first prepare a yeast starter). Add the remaining ingredients and knead, adding the melted butter towards the end. Knead the dough long enough for it to become soft and elastic. Place the dough into a lightly floured bowl, cover with a kitchen towel and leave in a warm place until doubled in size (about 1½ hours).

Line two flat baking trays, or one larger tray, with baking parchment.

Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured surface, knead briefly and divide into 12 equal portions, approximately 85–90 g each. Arrange the buns on the trays, leaving plenty of space between them, although if baked on one large tray they will touch each other. Cover with a kitchen towel and leave in a warm place for approximately 40 minutes, until doubled in size again. After this time, use the base of a glass to make a deep indentation in each bun, almost down to the tray. Fill each indentation with the sweet cheese filling and top with strawberries. Brush the dough around the filling with beaten egg (the additional egg mixed with water) and sprinkle with the crumble topping.

Bake for approximately 25 minutes at 180ºC. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a wire rack.

Ingredients for the cheese filling:

• 300 g full-fat or semi-fat curd cheese (twaróg), minced three times
• 55 g sugar
• 1 egg yolk
• 16 g vanilla sugar
• 50 g butter, melted*

Place all the ingredients for the cheese filling into a bowl and mix with a spoon until combined.

In addition:

• 400 g strawberries
• 1 egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon water, for brushing the dough

Ingredients for the crumble topping:

• 60 g butter, melted
• 100 g plain flour
• 50 g sugar

Place all the ingredients into a bowl and rub together with your fingertips until crumble forms.

Method for bread machine users:

Place all the yeast dough ingredients into the bread machine in the following order: liquid ingredients first, then dry ingredients, and finally the yeast. Select the ‘dough’ programme (kneading and first rise). Once the programme has finished, remove the dough, knead it lightly, and continue according to the main recipe above.

Enjoy!