This recipe was quite a little process, but if you're looking for a breakfast sugar bomb, it's totally worth it! I actually went and brushed my teeth again after eating these.
While the sticky buns turned out super delicious not everything went according to plan. It started out so well.
The first thing I had to do was make the brioche dough because, of course, it had to sit in the fridge overnight. Brioche is basically a bread dough but it has a higher egg and butter content which makes it extra rich and puffy. The dough came together pretty easily.
The flour and yeast go into a bowl. You add your sugar, salt, eggs and milk and combine. Then, you add softened butter and knead with the dough hook for about 10 minutes.
Then you turn the dough out onto a floured surface and stretch and fold it a few times. You leave it alone for an hour, then stretch and fold it again and stick it in the fridge. No drama yet.
I woke up earlier than CA the next morning so that I could assemble, proof and bake the sticky buns by a reasonable breakfast hour (11 am is reasonable, right?) First, we make the schmear and thank goodness, there's finally some BOOZE in this book. It's easy to convince me to add liquor to any recipe but rum in a sticky bun is a no brainer.
The schmear whips up easily by creaming the butter and brown sugar, then adding the honey, RUM and vanilla paste.
In the bottom of each of your muffin cups, you put a little bit of schmear and then stick it in the oven to melt. Then you drop a few pecans on top. After the buns bake, they get flipped over so the pecans and gooey deliciousness here
theoretically ends up on top of the bun.
Next step... pull the brioche dough out of the fridge where it's been resting and roll it out. Now we can start assembling...
First, you spread a layer of the pastry cream I made yesterday, then a layer of schmear and then sprinkle with cinnamon and pecans. Finally, you roll up that bad boy and slice him...
The note I should make here is that, just like the corn muffins which posed no issues, I was supposed to bake these in six large muffins cups. Again, I don't have a large muffin pan so I made them smaller and put them into 12 cups. First mistake.
Then you let them sit out to proof (or rise) for about an hour. Mine didn't rise much at all, but I don't think that affected the final texture of the brioche, it was still pretty light. Then, into the oven they go.... Here's where the bad stuff started to happen.
First - the gooey deliciousness started bubbling over from my SMALL muffin cups, ran over the sides of the pan and into the bottom of the oven creating a lovely morning haze (AKA smoke) that filled the kitchen. So what did I do? Nothing, except open the windows to keep the smoke detector from going off. You see the buns looked just fine, it was just the bottom of my oven that was creating carbon so I kept baking them until they were done.
The last step of making sticky buns is to flip the whole pan over to release the buns and reveal the perfectly swirled and golden topped buns. Not so much. Most of them stick to the pan and unraveled themselves. Sigh... Maybe I should have sprayed the pans with non-stick spray?
Despite the smoke and stickage, these are pretty darn tasty (and at least 3 of them didn't look hideous). CA and I each gobbled up what we estimated to be two of them. I though the addition of the pastry cream to the filling was odd when I
first read the recipe, but I think it really helped keep the buns moist
on the inside and added just a touch of creaminess. The pecans were
yummy and perfectly caramelized. CA liked them too - thankfully he can get past their looks and see what's on the inside... butter and sugar.
Now I have to go clean the oven.
Julie
PS - a large muffin tin is headed my way thanks to my friends at Amazon.
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