caramel brioche sticky bun

Ever since I came back from my trip to New York City, I’ve been obsessed with trying to recreate the fabulous foods I had – the melt in your mouth sticky buns at Maialino, the pretzel croissant at City Bakery, the goat’s milk ice cream at Victory Garden, and the Chocolate Green Tea Lava Cake at The Spot, among others.

I found a recipe for Caramel Brioche Sticky Buns from a new blog discovery, Noshings: Culinary Questings for the Deliciously Sublime, that looked and sounded delicious.  It’s been years since I made sticky buns from scratch, but I was eager to give this a try.  I followed the recipe as written, but I had a few hiccups along the way.  In retrospect, I don’t think I kneaded the dough enough because it wasn’t as smooth as what was pictured in Noshings’ post.  In part, that is probably why it didn’t rise as much as it should  have.  I let it rest about an hour longer than the recipe suggested, but it hadn’t doubled at that point.  It could also be the yeast, which has been in my fridge for a bit.   I still rolled it out and continued on with the recipe and the second rise was better, although it did not double in size.

I love the photos in Noshings’ post of the plump, properly-risen dough, but, alas, mine did not look like that.  Then, to top it off, I baked it for 35 minutes, which was a little too long, and it was a tad dry. I normally check the oven about 5 to 10 minutes before the time suggested in the recipe, but I was distracted and did not check.  That’s the thing with baking, there are so many factors that differ from one kitchen to another that someone else’s masterpiece is my solid first effort that could use some improvement.

Please don’t get me wrong. The resulting sticky buns  were still yummy, but it wasn’t quite what I was looking for.  I will be adding this to my recipe file, to be sure, because they were delicious, despite my slight difficulty.  But for now, I am still in search of my perfect sticky buns, the light and fluffy Maialino-style brioche caramellato.

I couldn’t fit all the rolled dough in my smaller pan so I put a few of the rolled dough in a muffin tin and made cinnamon rolls with some cream cheese frosting.  For the frosting, I combined 4 ounces of cream cheese (room temperature), 1 cup powdered sugar, and 1/4 cup unsalted butter (room temperature), and 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract in a bowl of a stand mixer with the paddle attachment and beat until combined.

 

Since I followed the recipe exactly as written, I won’t be reprinting it here. Here is the link for the original recipe that is found in Noshings. Be sure to have a look around there and get inspired.

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