I Just Made Me Some Danged Cinnamon Buns from Scratch

I saw Ree Drummond make her mom's cinnamon buns on her show one day, and basically had to mop up the drool. But at the time I was like, "Ugh, active dry yeast...scary!" and wrote it off. My irrational fear of yeast was like my irrational fear of the springform pan. I just hated the idea that I could do everything right and something like dumping in the yeast a few degrees off could kill it, or the walls of a pan could rip apart an otherwise perfect cheesecake.

But these cinnamon buns. They seemed to call to me. I was super excited when another favorite food blogger/baker/chef Joy made a visit to Ree's ranch and they made the buns together. That was it, damn it. I was gonna do this!

John and I had friends over this morning for brunch, and that was the kick in the pants to make a pan of my own. So I threw caution and fear to the wind, bought some yeast and whipped up the dough, filled it, rolled it, cut it, and stacked it into pans (the recipe makes 16, or 8 split between two cake pans), and popped them in the fridge overnight and baked them up this morning just ahead of our guests' arrival.

I'll note that I just kept the fillers simple, with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. I figured before I start loading up with chocolate and nuts (I don't yet own a zester...sigh), let me master the simple, pure version.

This recipe is beautiful, cuz it's all done right in a single dutch oven!

Once the yeast was sprinkled over the warmed milk mixture, it smelled like bread and/or a brewery. Aside from eating the buns, this part may have been John's favorite.

After the yeast settled in, I dumped in flour and stirred til it all just came together.

After 30 minutes, we had some definite rise going on...

...and after the hour it was all risen and aerated and fun.

The dough gets turned out, rolled,

and covered with melted butter, sugar, and cinnamon (of course)

I should note here that the above pic resulted in the only real snafu with the recipe, and it was totally my fault. I melted the butter and drizzled it over the dough when it was still pretty warm. This results in rather warm dough once rolled, and so when I plopped them into the cake pan, then kinda just...melted. In the pic below, the pan in the foreground are the first 8 I made--you can see how much better the ones at the back held together because the butter had cooled by the time I got to the "dump stuff on" phase.

Fresh out of the oven (this is the "attractive" pan, by the way.)

The glaze is made of powdered sugar, vanilla bean paste, and some OJ for zing. Mmm!

Ready for brunch.

I'll be back in my apron later this week when I bake up my mom's requested cake to celebrate her and my dad's 35th wedding anniversary when we see them next week.

Until then, happy Sunday, friends.