Delicious, gooey, lightly spiced, yeast-raised spirals - apparently the most popular baking recipe during lockdown 2! Our version, tested by students, is a simple bread dough swirled with cinnamon and a little sugar, additional cream cheese icing is optional. Let us know if you make them, we'd love to see! Happy baking!
Before you start baking, here are a few tips to help make sure that your cinnamon buns are the best they can be – flour – use bread flour to help make sure the buns have the doughy soft texture they need; find somewhere warm in the house for the dough to rise; use light soft brown sugar for it’s amazing flavour; salt – don’t be tempted to skip this as it’s important for the yeast and flavour; eggs – the additional egg yolk is a bit of a luxury, but it helps give the cinnamon buns a sligtht richness and they are a treat after all!
Equipment
- 22cm cake tin
- baking paper
- small saucepan
- bowl
- wooden spoon
- rolling pin
Ingredients
- 175ml milk - dairy or plant-based
- 7g packet quick yeast
- 30g light soft brown sugar
- 1 egg, plus 1 egg yolk
- 30g butter - melted
- 325g white strong bread flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- For the filling:
- 75g light soft brown sugar
- 1 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
- 30g soft butter
- If you want to make a cream cheese icing -
- 100g cream cheese
- 3 tablespoons soft butter
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- icing sugar to taste - add enough to make a good conistency, approximately
1
Cut a piece of baking paper to fit a 22cm cake tin to line the bottom and up the sides of the tin. Put the milk into a small saucepan and heat gently, keep watching as you don't want the milk to boil, as soon as it's just warm pour the milk into a large bowl.
2
Sprinkle the yeast over the warm milk. Add the sugar, egg, egg yolk and stir to mix everything together with a wooden spoon.
3
Add the flour and salt and mix again with your wooden spoon to make a dough.
4
Use your hands to take the dough out of the bowl and put onto a floured surface and knead the dough for about 10 minutes. If the dough is sticky, add a couple of tablespoons more flour. Pull the dough to see if it's stretchy.
5
Rub a little butter over the inside of a clean bowl, put the dough into the buttered bowl, cover with a clean teatowel and leave to rise until it's doubled in size, this can take bwteen 1 hour to 1 1/2 hours depending on how warm your room is.
6
Take the risen dough out of the bowl and put it back onto a floured surface, shape into a rectangle with your hands and then roll the dough into a rectangle about 35cm X 22cm.
7
Using your hands or the back of a spoon, spread the softened butter over the rectangle, leaving a small border of about 1cm.
8
Put the sugar and cinnamon into a small bowl and mix together. Sprinkle this mixture over the softened butter and if you like you can also use your hands to rub the cinnamon sugar into the butter.
9
Starting from one of the shorter 22cm sides, roll the dough tightly into a sausage shape and seal the edge - try to roll as tightly as you can as this makes the sprial shape.
10
Cut the sausage into 9 equal pieces - start by cutting into thirds and then cut each third in 3.
11
Put the pieces into your lined tin, so that the spirals are facing upwards. Cover with a clean teatowel and leave in a warm place to rise again for about 35 minutes. Turn the oven on to 180C.
12
Remove the teatowel and bake for 20-25 minutes or until cooked and golden. Don't be tempted to over bake as you want them to stay slightly soft. Leave to cool sligthly, eat as they are or mix all the ingredients together for the cream cheese icing and spoon some on top of the buns.