SMS: Sticky Buns!

I decided to make a half recipe, confident that between Shane and I we could polish off 6 buns in no time! I used instant yeast instead of active and 1% milk instead of whole but otherwise followed the recipe as written. The dough came together easily, though it was fairly sticky, so I wound up adding all of the additional flour Melissa mentions might be needed. After 10 minutes of kneading with the dough hook in my mixer, I took the dough out and kneaded it by hand for a few minutes to finish it. It was a really nice dough – smooth, elastic and beautifully speckled with the orange zest. The first rise took 2 hours and in the meantime I made the sticky sauce. It smelled amazing – butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and maple syrup are definitely a happy combination! After rolling out the dough, spreading it with the egg wash and cinnamon-sugar and forming the buns, I popped them in the fridge and went to bed.

This morning I pulled the buns from my fridge and found that they’d puffed quite a bit overnight (the picture above is straight out of the fridge). They rose even further in the oven with the steam bath. Finally, they were ready to bake! Mine were done after about 30 minutes. After letting them cool 10 minutes I pulled them out of the pan and dug in. They were quite good and definitely lived up to the expectations that I had for them! If anything, the sticky sauce was perhaps a bit too sweet for me but it didn’t stop me from eating two 🙂 I think I still prefer cinnamon rolls but these were a nice alternative. When Shane got home from his 25 mile bike ride this morning he had 3 buns and gave these a huge thumbs-up too!