Keep your hands off my buns!

Everyone once in a while I get the yearning for sticky buns. Sticky, gooey, so ilicit that the Marquis de Sade would blush, insulin rollercoaster, hose me down afterwards, yummy buns. Buns made from scratch with real brioche dough and stuffed with cinnamon and brown sugar and whatever goodies float your kayak.

Making sticky buns is a simple task that only needs high quality basic ingredients, patience and a good standing mixer. That and a bit of planning, which I’m always in short supply of, which is why I rarely make them.

Since the dough needs to rise in the fridge for several hours, I usually make my dough the night before and let it chill overnight. The dough I used was a basic brioche which is fancy schmancy talk for eggy rich bread dough stuffed with butter ;) I used Shady Mile’s free range eggs which has gorgeous saffron yellow yolks that gave the dough a rich sunshiny colour. My Kitchen Aid mixer did most of the work of incorporating soft butter in the dough as I sipped my tea and planned for what I could make the next day with my brioche dough.

I decided I would use half the dough to make good old fashion sticky cinnamon buns. The other half would be used for bitter chocolate and cranberry rolls. In the morning I filled and rolled out the buns and let them rise before popping them into the oven.

Here’s what came out:

The sticky cinnamon buns and one of the batch of chocolate cranberry rolls were baked in a pool of brown sugar ‘sticky’ mixture. The extra sticky mixture hardens nicely into toffee-like confection so I usually just pour it all out onto the baking sheet and save it for sprinkling onto ice cream or into cookies.

It’s a good thing that it takes a bit of planning to make these or else I’d be making them all the time and before long, I wouldn’t be able to fit in my climbing harness ;)

I also make them smaller than what the recipe calls for and much smaller than commercial cinnamon buns which rival commercial bagels for oversize absurdity. These are so rich and flavorful that you don't need a huge one to satisfy your sticky bun craving.

I also made a batch of 'non-sticky' bittersweet chocolate & cranberry rolls, one of my favorite breakfast buns! Simple brioche wrapped around chunks of bittersweet organic chocolate and frozen local cranberries, oh, this is what the devil uses as bait. The rolls aren’t very sweet but buttery rich accented with the bitter chocolate and tart cranberries. A more grown-up variation of a sticky roll that goes ever so well with a cup of coffee on a damp, cold early spring day.

I had a minor heart attack during the baking process. As the buns were halfway through their baking, smoke started coming out of the oven! EEK! My precious sticky buns were ruined! Had I turned the oven on too high? Did the timer go off & I didn’t hear it?

Luckily, it was only some of the brown sugar mix that had fallen onto the oven floor and started scorching. Whew! I opened up all the kitchen windows and doors to get rid of the smoke, made myself a cup of tea and sat in front of the oven, & kept watch that the buns made it through the baking process unscorched. I'm not taking any chances people. I don't have it in me to make another batch and who knows when the sticky bun spirit will move me again.

Now I only have to find a safe and secret place to hide them before DH wakes up. What do you mean share? Sharing is for kindergarteners.

Update - To answer Stephanie's comment: Drats! I guess I'll have to wait until your other car is fixed before I bait the trap again ;)

I do freeze them. I just wrap them in foil and toss them in a freezer bag. I do them in 2-3 bun portions so I can pull them out the night before and have just the right amount ready for the next day. The buns do keep for a couple days and a quick zap in the nuke box or a quick oven reheat and they come right back to their yummy, soft selves.

Happy Eating!

Jen

Nanaimo's 100 Mile Diet Challenge