Mark's favorite cinnamon buns
Mark came down with a cinnamon-bun craving
this year. And after he brought home cans of dough a couple of times, I
told him I was pretty sure I could make something better from scratch.
So I played with a few recipes, tweaking them until they were still
decadently delicious but didn't give me such a sugar high that I crashed
an hour later. And Mark's favorite cinnamon buns were born.
You'll need to start
about five hours before you want to eat since cinnamon buns are
basically a sweetened yeast bread. For the dough, mix:
- 3.5 cups of all-purpose flour
- 1 package of rapid-rise yeast
- 1/3 cup of white sugar
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup of whole milk, warm
- 4 tablespoons of butter, melted
- 2 teaspoons of cinnamon
- 1 teaspoon of salt
If you're using
rapid-rise yeast, you don't need to proof the leavening. Instead, just
pour all of the ingredients into a bowl, put the bread-hook attachment
onto your mixer, and mix at medium speed for a few minutes until the
dough is fully combined. (Or you can knead by hand until you get the
same results.)
Now cover the dough with a damp dish towel and set it in a warm place until it doubles in bulk (about two hours).
Once the dough's ready, mix up the filling:
- 3/4 cup of brown sugar
- 4 teaspoons of cinnamon
- 1/8 teaspoon of salt
Flour a clean surface and
roll out your dough until it's about as big as you see in the picture
above. You want it to be a rectangle rather than a square, but the exact
dimensions are up to you. A bigger rectangle will mean your rolls have
more layers but a smaller thickness of cinnamon-sugar in between each
one.
Now melt:
- 4 tablespoons of butter
Brush the melted butter
onto the dough, leaving about an inch on each long side uncovered. The
unbuttered regions will stick together better so your cinnamon rolls
won't unravel as they rise and bake.
Sprinkle the
cinnamon-sugar mixture on top of the butter as evenly as you can. Then
roll up the dough to make one long cylinder. Using a sharp knife, cut
the roll into sixteen equal pieces. (This is easiest done by cutting the
roll in half, then each half in half, then each quarter into quarters.)
Butter a 9x13 dish or two
8-inch round cake pans. Place the cinnamon rolls in the pan relatively
close together so they'll merge as they rise. Then set the dish(es) in a
warm place to rise again for another two hours (or more or less
depending on the temperature of your kitchen).
When the rolls have
nearly doubled in bulk, place a rack in the middle of your oven and turn
it to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. I like to put my pan in the oven as it
preheats so the rolls get one more fast rise before they bake into
place. Using that method, they usually need about 13 minutes to fully
bake so the bottoms are brown, the tops are very lightly touched with
brown, and the centers are cooked through.
While the rolls bake, mix up your icing:
- 1/2 cup of confectioner's sugar
- 1 scant tablespoon of whole milk
- 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla
Stir the icing until it forms a thick batter.
As soon as the buns come
out of the oven, drizzle the icing over the hot rolls. I simply get a
spoonful of icing and let it drip over the edge of the utensil to make
lines across the buns. (Sometimes I mess up and make blobs, but Mark
doesn't seem to care.)
This recipe makes 16
buns, which are best served warm. Nuke each one for 15 seconds in the
microwave if you let them get cold. Enjoy!
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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