Another sunny day, another day that I’m in the mood to bake! Todays treat is sticky cinnamon buns. This is a recipe I found online, tweaked a little as I found parts of the method a little unnecessarily convoluted and one ingredient variation as I didn’t have plain/all purpose flour.
So, for the buns, the ingredients are:
- 4 cups white bread flour
- 1 teaspoon quick yeast
- 1/4 cup caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup butter
Put the flour and yeast in a bowl, pour in the egg and fork through roughly. In a pan warm the milk, water, sugar and butter until the butter has melted but you can still put your finger in comfortably, you don’t want it too hot or it will kill the yeast! Pour into your bowl but only about 3/4, I often find I have a little too much liquid, adding more if needed. Bring the dough together, it will be a little stickier than you usual bread dough so bear that in mind. Once it is a good dough, not too dry and not too sticky. Knead for 10 minutes then put in a lightly oiled bowl to prove.
Cover with clingfilm and leave until at least doubled in size, it may get a little steamy!
While waiting for your dough to prove, let’s get on with the filling and buttery bath they will bake in.
Buttery bath ingredients:
- 3/4 cup butter
- 3/4 brown sugar
- 1/2 cup pecans (optional, I don’t add these)
Warm the butter gently then add the sugar, whisking until well dissolved. Grease a large baking dish and pour in the buttery mixture. If using the pecans, sprinkle these on top.
Roll filling ingredients:
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1/2 pecans (optional)
Combine in a bowl and set aside. At this stage, also melt 1/4 cup of butter and set aside.
Now to roll out your dough. This is a little bit tricky as it will fight you all the way trying to spring back! Persevere and roll out as thinly as you can, you will find after a while the dough won’t bounce back nearly so much and you can get it quite thin, I’d say about 0.5cm. Sprinkly on your sugar/cinnamon mix and then roll!
Now to the rolling up, Don’t be afraid to poke and pull at your dough a bit, it can be a bit tricky to get a tight roll and requires a bit of strong arming your lovely soft, bouncy dough!
Now cut into 2cm wide pieces, laying into the buttery bath. Now, as you will see from the finished product pictures to follow, I over filled my dish, when making again, I will put at least a row less in there. Brush with the melted butter.
Cover with clingfilm and leave to prove again until doubled in size, this is when I discovered my overcrowding error. Preheat oven to 190.
Pop into the oven for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Now, mine are a little overdone on top because they were bursting out of the dish. Should I have not been so keen to cook ALL the dough at once, I would have had perfectly browned cinnamon swirls. The finished articles look a bit imperfect but I can assure you they are amazing to eat!
Once out of the oven, turn out, bottoms up, onto a dish, allowing the remaining buttery, sugary syrup to seep down.
The finished, yummy, imperfect bun!
If you have a go at making these, let me know how you get on and if they’re prettier than mine!
