Blackberry and Ricotta Chelsea Buns

This bake was a bit of an experiment. I have made some chelsea buns filled with a slightly sweetened ricotta mixture and fresh blackberries. They are glazed with apricot jam.

When I say it was an experiment, I mean I ended up rolling a slightly squidgy ricotta filling in dough with some frozen blackberries. Then when slicing it into pieces, creating what can only be described as a blood bath. I would say the pitfall in my method is the decision to leave the blackberries mostly frozen before rolling up the dough as it meant they were hard and prone to being pushed towards the end of the dough. However, with a bit of perseverance I managed to create something that looked a lot better than expected and tastes delicious, with the slightly savoury ricotta and tangy blackberries cooking down wonderfully inside the soft dough. The filling is a little moist due to the tendency for frozen fruit to have a lot of moisture loss, but other than that they are far better than I thought they would be when I put them in the oven!