Sunday food: Cinnamon buns

Ingredients:
1 cup slightly warm Milk
2 whole eggs
⅓ cup melted butter
4½ cups strong white bread Flour
1 tsp Salt
½ cup caster sugar
2½ tsp dried yeast (one regular sachet)

½ cup dark brown sugar
½ cup light brown sugar
2½ tbsp ground cinnamon
⅓ cup spreadable butter

1 cup milk
2 cups icing sugar
50g melted butter
1 tsp vanilla essence

Method:
Put the first cluster of ingredients into a dough cycle in your bread machine, wet ingredients first. I originally used the basic dough cycle on my Panasonic, but it turns out the quicker ‘pizza dough’ cycle is just as good for this recipe. Yay!

When it’s ready, take out the dough and knock it back on a floured surface. Roll it out into a rough rectangle shape, roughly the size of a sheet of A4 paper.

Spread your sheet with the butter – I’ve found using a ‘spreadable’ butter here makes for buns that stay a bit gorgeously gooey at room tempterature. Mix together the sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle over the butter.

Gently lift one of the short edges of the rectangle and roll the dough. Sit it so the seam is at the bottom.

Mark the roll every inch with a knife. Take a length of (non-minty!) dental floss and cut your roll at each mark – this is *crazy* satisfying, and gives you a lovely clean cut.

Arrange your rolls in a large baking pan, lined with parchment. Nestle them together but leave a little room for rising. Sit the pan somewhere warm, with clean a tea towel over the top. Leave for half an hour. Preheat your oven to about 200c.

Once they’ve risen, put your buns in the oven for 10-15 minutes – watch them, as this seems to vary with every batch. Mix together the remaining ingredients and pour over the buns while still hot from the oven.

* pro tip: when mixing your icing, add half the sugar first, so it’s very runny. Drizzle a little of this into the crevices of your buns, then add the rest of the sugar and ice as usual. Gives super-moist & gooey insides! *

Best eaten warm, but delicious any time, quite frankly.