Last weekend, I was visiting my sister in Boston and thinking I probably wouldn’t get a chance to work on last week’s BBA challenge until I returned home. And then I remembered: my sister has a fantastic, spacious kitchen; and a very familiar mixer; and she loves sticky buns. To top it all off, it was 4th of July, and H and M would be joining us later in the weekend. Many mouths would make quick work of the rolls and buns so I wouldn’t feel forced to eat them all by myself. Did I need any more reasons to make cinnamon rolls and sticky buns?
Like many other BBA participants, I chose to make the whole recipe, but turned half into cinnamon buns (the swirls with the white sugar frosting on top) and half into sticky buns (the same swirls, cooked in a molten bath of caramel and nuts).
I have to say up front that I’ve never once craved a cinnamon bun or sticky roll. I don’t get the drools when I smell a Cinnabon at the airport. They’re just not my thing. So I wasn’t all that excited about this challenge, but I was willing to give it a try. I think this recipe has converted me. Maybe I just never had a good cinnamon roll before (I’ve often found them dry and not cinnamon-y enough). This recipe tuned out beautiful results: moist, lofty, full of cinnamon sugar.
The dough itself was a silky-soft wonder. Deceptively low on butter, but you’d never know it. Easy to mix, and a dream to roll out.
My inexperience with this type of bread shows in the uneven slices I cut, but it didn”t much matter. By the time the rolls had risen, they looked reasonably uniform, and definitely edible.
As soon as I took them out of the oven, I could tell I would love the cinnamon buns. The whole house smelled incredible. It was all we could do to wait until they cooled enough to dig in. I was reasonably happy with the sticky buns, too, though I erred on the side of baking too long (the recipe warned sternly about not cooking them enough, so I gave them an extra five minutes, which was probably about 2-3 minutes too long). My sister tells me, however, that a day or two later, the caramel softened up nicely in the humidity.
We had no trouble polishing off the entire yield of buns and rolls in just a few days. You can see the step-by-step photos here.
Grongar 
Your buns look great. 🙂
SO sweet and gooey looking. Great job.
Susie
Lucky you!! I wish I could bake together with my sisters. I have 4 of them and they all are in Toronto and I’m in Ottawa. I also loved these buns. The sticky buns were my favourite. Yours turned out beautifully. The white glaze looked so pretty.
So pretty! I don’t ever eat “store-bought” cinnamon rolls either – not my thing – but, as you found out, homemade are a different critter entirely! Glad you liked them, and that you had a bunch of people to share them with. Mine all went to “waist.”
Wow! Love the looks of those sticky buns!
Very pretty….congrats!