Another week another treat. This weeks focus was on cinnamon buns and trying out a recipe that uses yeast. I want to continue to challenge myself as I learn how to bake for this inquiry, so the time has come for me to step it up a notch. As always, I started this week with research to find the best and easiest to understand cinnamon bun recipe. After looking through all the different variations of recipes that call for raisins, nuts, cream cheese and icing sugar I settled on the first recipe that popped up with five star ratings; Homemade Cinnamon Rolls.
The first step in this recipe was to make the dough. This was the only part where I could go wrong in this recipe because of the yeast, if my milk was too warm or if my eggs and butter were too cold it wouldn’t work. I started by heating my milk up and then I sprinkled the yeast packet in and gave it a stir before adding the rest of my ingredients. After mixing all my ingredients, I kneaded my dough for 5 minutes and set it in a warm place to rise. This is the part where I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. After 30 minutes I checked under the towel that was draped over top of the bowl and was instantly disappointed. It didn’t even rise an inch, or centimeter. I was just hoping that maybe it needed some more time to rise so I left it for another 20 minutes and then returned to the dough still in the same form. Absolutely heartbreaking.
After putting so much time and effort into making this dough I thought I would still give it a shot so I rolled it out, spread my filling onto it then rolled it up and prepared it to bake. When it was all ready to go on my pan it looked really good honestly. The recipe recommended that it needed to be set aside to rise again before baking but we all know how that turned out the first time, so I just set it in the oven. After 17 minutes the cinnamon buns rose and were all yummy and golden brown. They looked really good and smelled amazing right out of the oven so I still had hope for them. After waiting for them to cool I topped them with my cream cheese frosting and called it a day.
I would say these cinnamon buns ended up being passable. Not the best thing I have made nor the worst. They had really good taste and the filling and cream cheese was amazing but the texture was so off. They weren’t fluffy nor soft which are all the best things of a good cinnamon bun. I honestly don’t know where I went wrong but it must have been something with the yeast, maybe not letting it proof in the milk before adding the rest of my ingredients or not kneading it enough but this recipe was definitely harder than I thought it would be. Sadly I would rate these cinnamon buns a 6/10 because of the texture. I think next time I might try a different recipe and do more research on how to use active dry yeast.
