Orange Cinnamon Buns

It has finally happened: the last day of the school holidays is here!!!

This has been a low budget week for us (goodbye, maternity pay, you were fun while you lasted) but we've managed to survive without too many casualties.  

However, not all is well...

Now, I don't want to worry anyone TOO much, but I think things are going a bit rough with Will and Kate right now.  How do I know?  This:


Yes, a crack has appeared in my one of my 50p charity shop Will and Kate wedding mugs.  It's cause for concern, folks.  The new baby has obviously upset things a bit; it's not easy becoming parents, particularly when you are in the public eye.   You know what she needs right now?  Cinnamon buns.

Shut up, it's true.

My guess is she won't eat them, though, so we should have some for her.  It's the right thing to do.

Now let's gather up some ingredients.





I've not tried this recipe before, so anything could have happened.  ANYTHING.

I pinned it off of the Williams Sonoma page, and then my friend pinned it and then she did something crazy.  She MADE the recipe!  Within a day!  So of course I had to as well.

First, I warmed some milk and added some yeast.

Then I added eggs, sugar, salt...

and flour.  It had said to wait until the yeast was bubbling, but WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT?

So I ignored them and stirred it all together.

Then in went the magic ingredient: butter.

Now here the recipe had I line that I HATE seeing in recipes: "Attach the dough hook and knead on low speed".  Not everyone has a stand mixer with a dough hook!  I do have a vintage stand mixer, but no dough hook, and I'm afraid to use the mixer at all right now as it gives off a funny metallic smell, so I knead things by hand.  With a recipe like this, it is a pain, as the dough is quite sticky and hard to work.  I added a significant amount of flour, but hopefully the 4 eggs and butter balanced that out.

I worked the dough till I got bored, and used my new fancy dough scraper for the first time.  I got it from my sister in law when I was going through her kitchen stuff and said "ooh, look, a dough scraper!" and she said "what's a dough scraper?"  She obviously didn't have any use for it, so she gave it to me.  Score!

I put the dough away to rise (yes, I snuck some wholegrain bread flour in there.  I don't know why, either) and got to work on the filling.

Oh, guess I don't have too many pecans.  Oh well.

Brown sugar, cinnamon, and orange zest.  Looks good to me.

An hour and a bit later, the dough looked like this.

So I rolled it out.  I kind of ignored the dimensions the recipe said as it said to roll out 2 rectangles and instead I just made one big rectangle.

I used my fingers to smear butter all over it.

It was actually thinner in places than I should have made it, but oh well.  Then I added the filling and threw some chopped apple on just for fun.  Oh, and a bit of flour to help stop it all from spilling out.

Then rolled it up.  Usually I like to use the rolling pin to press the filling into the butter and dough before rolling it up, but I forgot.  Oops.

I tried at first to cut it with floss, but ended up just using a sharp knife.  And at this point all three kids were making noise so I was kind of rushing...

So they ended up looking like this.  Oops.  Maybe rising will fix it.

Er...yeah...

Well, good icing fixes everything, right?  I put some butter, cream cheese, and vanilla in a bowl, whipped them up, then added icing sugar.

 When I make cream cheese icing in the UK it always ends up runnier than when I do it in the USA.  Why is that?  Still tastes good.

Time to check on the buns.  Whoa, mama.

Let's hide those beasts with some icing, eh?

Whoops, some must have disappeared somehow.

So yes, they were tasty, but not as good as this recipe (so long as you use butter instead of margarine): http://www.food.com/recipe/cinnabon-cinnamon-rolls-76864?soc=pinterest
I don't think the orange zest added much, and they weren't as gooey as I'd hoped they'd be.  The wholegrain flour messed up the smooth texture you should really have, and the apples didn't really cook through enough.  I think dried apple would work better, or just raisins instead.  I will not be tempted by another cinnamon roll recipe again...

Well not until someone else pins one, anyway.

Here is the original recipe anyway if you think you'd like it.

Orange Cinnamon Rolls

For the dough:

1 package active dry yeast

3/4 cup milk, warmed (110°F)

1/4 cup granulated sugar

4 eggs

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour, plus more as needed

1 1/2 tsp. kosher salt

6 Tbs. (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into chunks

For the filling:

4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into chunks

2/3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar

2 tsp. ground cinnamon

Finely grated zest of 1 large orange

1 egg, lightly beaten with 1 tsp. water

For the cream cheese frosting:

1/2 lb. cream cheese, at room temperature

4 Tbs. (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2 tsp. vanilla extract

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

To make the dough, in the bowl of an electric stand mixer, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk and let stand until foamy, about 10 minutes. Add the granulated sugar, eggs, the 4 1/2 cups flour and the salt. Attach the dough hook and knead on low speed, adding a little more flour if needed, until the ingredients come together. Toss in the butter and continue to knead until the dough is smooth and springy, about 7 minutes. Lightly oil a large bowl. Form the dough into a ball, put it in the oiled bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rise at room temperature until doubled in volume, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking dish. Punch down the dough and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Cut the dough in half.

Roll out 1 dough half into a rectangle about 9 by 14 inches. Spread with half of the butter, then sprinkle evenly with half of the brown sugar, half of the cinnamon and half of the orange zest. Starting at the long side closest to you, roll the rectangle away from you, forming a log. Cut the log crosswise into 8 equal slices. Arrange the slices, cut side down, in half of the prepared pan. Repeat with the remaining dough and filling ingredients, and arrange the slices in the other half of the pan. Cover the pan loosely with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm, draft-free spot until puffy, about 1 hour, or refrigerate overnight, then let stand at room temperature for 30 to 60 minutes before baking.

Meanwhile, make the cream cheese frosting: In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the flat beater, combine the cream cheese, butter and vanilla and beat on medium-high speed until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes. Gradually beat in the confectioners’ sugar and continue to beat until thoroughly combined, stopping the mixer to scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. If the consistency is too soft, refrigerate the frosting until it is spreadable, about 15 minutes.

Transfer the pan with the rolls to a wire rack and let cool slightly, then spread the rolls with the frosting while they are still warm. Pull the rolls apart and serve warm. Makes 16 rolls.

Cardamom Buns

It's the school holidays.  This means I alternate between feeling I should keep my kids happy and stimulated and being satisfied simply with keeping everyone alive for the day.  Today we didn't leave the house, but I figure that's ok because I baked something, I organised a box full of wires, and I made dinner.  That sounds like a good enough list of accomplishments for me.

The weather was awful today, and I had promised my son I would make blueberry muffins.  But I didn't feel like blueberry muffins, so I convinced him it was a better idea to make cardamom buns.  For a yeasted dough, this recipe doesn't take too long, and they fill the flat with nice autumn/winter smells.  I finally bit the bullet and bought a sizeable packet of ground cardamom online as I was sick of paying extortionate prices for tiny bottles and hate using a pestle and mortar for the pods.  I keep the bag in a tin with some other dry staples and love how every time I open the tin that scent of cardamom comes wafting out, asking to be made into buns.  On the rare occasion I escape my kids I like to go to Peter's Yard and have one with a pot of tea.  They make them there with the option of a fresh fruit and custard topping, but I rarely have the energy to whip up some creme patissiere as well as doing all that is required below.  No matter, the fact that I get to eat them fresh out the oven more than makes up for it.  

First you make the basic dough, kneading it for as long as you can be bothered to do so, and stick it in a bowl to rise, covering it on top to prevent any drying out.  One of the contestants on the Great British Bake Off uses shower caps to cover her bowls, which I think is a fantastic idea.  Sometime I'm going to have to order a stack of those to keep handy.  I had a small person helping me, so she got a wad of dough and kneaded it as well.  While they were rising, I made the filling and set it alongside them.  

There's a lot of yeast in this baby, so you only need to wait a half hour before the next step.  Check it has risen...

Sure, looks fine to me.

You then roll it out into a rectangle roughly about 12" by 16".

I'd kind of like a real yard stick like teachers have.  I have this from my sewing box, and it always slides off the work surface when I'm using it.  Plus, a yard stick would be useful for when I want to add emphasis to what I'm saying during lectures to my children.  But for now I'll just make do with the tape measure.  *sigh*

You then smear the filling all over the dough.  The little helper was given a spoon of filling to do hers.  You may notice it is an apostle teaspoon.  I was given them by a colleague who made it a mission of hers to try and find 12 apostle teaspoons.  She had 8 and was trying to get 4 more when she visited the creepy junk shop "Chariot Express", located next to Peckhams.  She mentioned her quest to the owner one day when she was sifting through his collection of teaspoons, and the next week found that the prices of his teaspoons had magically increased tenfold.  She never did complete the collection, but gave the spoons to me to clear her kitchen drawer of their clutter.  And the shop went up in flames and now it looks like it is going to re-open in a new property 50 yards away.  

But I digress.  Then you fold the dough in half onto itself and cut it into strips.  They don't need to be pretty, mine never are as usually by this point I'm doing it left-handed, juggling a baby, and shouting to someone to JUST PUT THAT DOWN AND LEAVE THEM ALONE.  NOW.  1...2...

Then one by one, grab a strip and twist it like so...sort of...

And then curl it around itself to get a series of mounds that your children attack with brushes of eggwash.  Just make sure they wash their hands first.  Not that they'll be touching any of the buns; it's just a good excuse to get them to wash their hands once in a while.  

My daughter made a few swirls of her own, which were for HER to eat. 

I think I was supposed to let them rise again before I did the egg wash, but it just didn't happen that way and they turned out just fine.  Another half hour rising, a sprinkling of demerara sugar and into the oven they go, emerging at the end like this.

Notice the filling spills out a bit onto the tray, creating crisp cinnamon cardamom sugar pieces for someone to clean up.  One of the unexpected perks - just wait until it stops bubbling though, hot sugar is no fun.

So the recipe I use is basically as follows, if you fancy making some yourself.  :

Makes around 20

Ingredients

Buns

• 4 tsp instant yeast
• 75 g butter, cubed
• 250 mL milk
• 1/4 cup caster sugar
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 3 cups plain flour

Filling

• 75 g butter at room temperature, cubed
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
•  6 Tbsp sugar

Topping

• 1 small egg, beaten
• Demerara sugar

Method

Put yeast into a large bowl

Melt the butter over low heat (or in the microwave as I do). Once it has melted stir in the milk. Remove from heat when the mixture reaches lukewarm (or just nuke it a little longer). Pour a little of the butter and milk mixture over the yeast and stir until dissolved.

Add the rest of the butter and milk mixture along with the sugar, salt, cardamom and flour. Flour your hands and knead the dough until it is no longer sticky. It should pull away from the side of the bowl. Cover and rest in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the butter, cardamom, cinnamon and sugar for the filling to a smooth paste.  I often have to microwave the butter a bit for this as I never remember to leave butter out long enough in advance to get it to room temperature

Lightly sprinkle your work surface with some flour. Use a rolling pin  to roll out the dough to roughly 30 cm by 40 cm/12″ by 16″. Spread the filling over the entire surface in an even layer. Fold the dough in half and slice into about 12 strips. Twist the dough, and then form into a bun by curling the dough around itself.

Place the buns on baking trays lined with baking paper and allow to rest for a further 30 minutes. Preheat the oven to 220 ºC/440 ºF.

Use a pastry brush to lightly coat the buns with the beaten egg. Sprinkle each bun with demerara sugar.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, or until golden. Remove from the oven and allow to cool.