Sticky buns attempt 1

Today I made sticky buns. I've made cinnamon buns before, and these are similar except they have and ooey gooey mess that's baked into the top. I used a recipe from elise.com/recipes. It was adapted from an Oprah recipe, which made me a little worried, but they looked good.

The process itself is pretty simple. I kneaded the dough by hand for 10 minutes since I don't have one of these, and let it rise. One point of interest is that I used instant yeast, not active dry yeast, so I didn't have to proof it. I just mixed all of the dough ingredients together.

Later on in the recipe I rolled out the dough and brushed on melted butter. The recipe calls for melting 4 tablespoons of butter and brushing it onto the rolled out dough. I applied liberally, but I don't think I used half of the melted butter. Also, something not mentioned in this recipe is it's a good idea to leave about a 2 inch margin at the top of the dough so that when you're rolling it up, that last piece of dough will stick and your rolls won't unravel as easily. I then applied the cinnamon-brown sugar mixture and went the extra mile and also sprinkled some chopped pecans on top.

Once I rolled the dough, I used my beautiful new Wusthof tomato knife which does an excellent job of cutting the rolls. A sharp serrated knife won't squash your roll, even if you have chunks of pecans inside like I had. Meanwhile I created the gooey syrup and poured it into the pan, sprinkled pecans on top, and then placed 15 rolls on top of that. You'll notice in the picture two little end pieces which I also crammed in there. I might need to work on my rolling so I don't get such irregular shaped end pieces which need to be cut off separately.

The next morning, they came out of the fridge and into the oven after a short resting period. I'm still getting used to the oven in my new apartment, and it is getting much hotter than it should, so my buns were a little too toasted--but nothing serious.

These buns had a really good texture: light and chewy. However, the taste wasn't ideal for me. First of all, there was too much orange zest in the dough. It wasn't quite overpowering, but it was too much for my taste. I would reduce by at least 1/3 or even eliminate the zest. Secondly, the sticky syrup had too much honey. It was made of butter, brown sugar, honey, and corn syrup. I think I would reduce the honey from 3 to 1 tablespoons or eliminate it altogether. It was too strong--I prefer honey as a minor accent rather than a major flavor. In fact, while eating these buns the primary flavors are orange and honey--not bad, but not my preference. I really like the taste of a butter-sugar or butter-brown sugar mixture but I just tasted honey. If I use the same recipe next time I'll adjust those two things but I think the rest of the recipe worked out great.