Mmmm Mmmm Bread: Cinnamon Bun and Coconut Buns

It finally snowed this week.  Yes!!! Some fluffy white stuff for once…boooo weeks after Christmas and New Years.   It had been rather cold and crisp in Vancouver lately as I waken to see the frost covered grass and pavement glistening.  The sight and sound of neighbours scrapping away at the icy sheet of white crystals off their car while huffing and puffing out clouds of steam, was enough to send shivers down my spine.  In light of the cold weather, I decided to make something warm today….bread.   Nothing smells as good as freshly baked bread right out of the oven…ahhh the wonderful aromas of coconut, cinnamon and sugar.  I have been craving cinnamon and sugar recently thus decided to make cinnamon buns.  In addition, I loved roasted coconut thus made coconut buns as well.  Unbelievably it took a few hours to proof, knead and shape the buns but the end result was well worth it.  Lovely and moist, the freshly baked warm aromatic buns were now in my tummy.

I started of the day proofing the bread dough using a recipe I found in an Intermezzo magazine.  It’s actually a pretty good recipe I must say.  Anyways…I made the dough, proofed it and split the dough into 2 portions for two different buns, Cinnamon Pecan and Coconut.

I rolled the dough out into a rectangle, spread on the filling, rolled it up and proof it  till 1 1/2 size in the oven.  As a tip, I placed a small bowl of hot water to encourage the proofing of the buns.  Once they were ready, I baked them at 350F for about 25 minutes until golden brown on top.  I then glazed the buns with blueberry honey.

Here was the recipe I use always as a base for sweet buns and for Cinnamon Buns.

Cinnamon Bun Recipe (This recipe could be used as basis for other sweet buns)

For Dough

1 teasp. dry yeast

1/2 cup plus 1 teasp. sugar

1 1/4 cups warm milk

2 eggs plus 1 egg yolk

1 teasp. vanilla extract

4 cups all purpose flour ( I used 5 cups)

1 teasp. salt

1 1/2 sticks butter

For Filling

1/2 cup dark brown sugar ( I used demera sugar)

1 tablesp.cinnamon

1 stick unsalted butter (I used 1/2 stick)

3/4 cup toasted pecans

(For Coconut buns, take out cinnamon, and add approx. 1 cup roasted coconut instead.  Subst. white sugar for brown sugar-I used 1/2 cup white sugar)

Note:  The buns came out really nice and soft.  They had a very pleasing aroma and taste.  I opted not to use a cream cheese glaze or icing as I felt the sweetness was enough with honey.

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