A Sticky Situation

It’s been a rough week here at Yumbrosia Headquarters. Most of my energies have been devoted to battling The Sickness, with leftover efforts going toward schoolwork and helping out at the Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon. My parents came to visit on Friday, and Matt is here this weekend. With all that was going on, I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to fit in the most important event of the month: the Daring Bakers.
This month’s challenge was hosted by Marce of Pip in the City and the assignment was delicious. She gave us a choice of cinnamon rolls and sticky buns, with recipes adapted from Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice. While my original intention was to do some of each, my busy schedule led me to stick to sticky.
I put together the dough Thursday afternoon. This was the least sweltering day of the heat wave that hit us last week, but even so, the butter melted on the counter just out of the fridge. This worked in my favor, allowing me to easily cream the butter with the sugar. The rest of the dough came together just as easily, except that it was so sticky that I kept having to add more flour. This, I realized quickly, was my fault for measuring in the flour a half cup short, but shaking in some more fixed it all nicely.
In the heat, the dough puffed up quickly, and in the meantime, I made my glaze. I made some simple syrup and used that for the corn syrup, and it worked out well enough. I had planned to cut the amounts of sugar, butter, sugar, vanilla, and sugar in half, but accidentally added the full amount of sugar and had to go through with it. Oh, well. I suppose I’ll learn to live with the extra.
Things got a little more difficult after the first rise. The recipe doesn’t mention punching down the dough, but I found it impossible to roll out with all the air bubbles; it just kept springing back into an amorphous mass. After squeezing out the yeasty gases, though, I managed a passable rectangle and scattered my homemade cinnamon sugar over it.
Now, about two weeks ago, I saw Alton Brown making cinnamon buns on Good Eats. He showed us how to roll the dough up, working from the middle to the edges and back again with a twisting motion. The film for this, as for most of the demonstration, was sped up, but it looked easy. I am here to tell you that it was not easy. I rolled my dough with a twisting motion, only to see the middle unroll itself as I moved to the edges. Worse, any attempt to reroll was thwarted by the coating of cinnamon sugar.
After struggling with this for some time, I contented myself with a loose, messy roll and cut it into nine pieces, which I crammed into my wee 8-by-8-inch pan. I realized that the pan I had bought would be too small, but it was too late to go out for another one. Rather than sitting the prescribed half inch apart, they molded immediately into one great sticky bun.
I covered the tray, stuck it in the fridge, and went online to see if I was screwed. According to other Daring Bakers, the main concern would be overflowing glaze, so I planned to put it over a foil baking tray. It worked well. Friday morning, I took the rolls out for the second rise, and went off to class. I met up with my parents for lunch afterwards, and when we got back from a massive Target expedition for, among other things, more bakeware, they were ready for to bake.
As my dad put my bookcase together, my mom gave herself a tour, and I tried to comfort my exiled dog, the house filled with the smell of pure delicious. The glass dish helped me monitor the bottoms (aka the tops) of the sticky buns, and I pulled them out when they were fully caramelized. I flipped them out onto the defoiled baking sheet and beheld them in awe.
The recipe tells us to wait twenty minutes before digging in, but we couldn’t help ourselves. I used a knife to tear them roughly along the lines of the original rolls, and we gobbled them up. Although they were a bit shapeless and lacked a clear swirl, they were amazing. The light, fluffy bun had a hint of lemon that offset rich, buttery glaze. The earthy walnuts and plumped raisins were delightfully sweet against the pillowy, yeasty layers. I set one aside for Matt, packed another one to send home to Drew, and left the rest out for my roommates.
And the reactions? My parents said they were “perfect.” Drew said they were “very good, but far too many nuts.” Jenna and John called them variations on “sooooo good.” Tim called them “orgasmic.”
I think it’s safe to say that the sticky buns were a hit.







