brioche two ways

This weeks TWD recipe was for Pecan Honey Sticky Buns and was chosen by Madam Chow of Madam Chows Kitchen. I have a recipe for sticky buns I use regularly, when I used to sell them at the farmer's market. These have an avid fan base, but I now have a new favourite recipe! I made these on a busy day, in between rushing around sorting things for my own wedding and attending another, so did not get to enjoy them in an ideal, sit down with a good coffee kind of way. Instead they were picked at off and on through the course of the day....and were surprisingly good the next day when warmed a little.

These sticky buns are made with a brioche dough. I have never come across this method of making brioche, where the butter is mixed into the otherwise finished dough, piece by piece. The poor Kitchenaid was well and truly put through its paces, but it was definitely worthwhile. The recipe calls for a half batch of brioche - I made the whole batch, figuring it was just as easy effortwise to pump out a full batch at once - and used the other half to make some brioche raisin snails. In the end I ended up making only a half batch of the sticky buns (the rest is in the freezer for a more suitably lazy day) as the dough goes a surprisingly long way...which assists to justify the amount of butter in the recipe - not quite so scary when you divide it on a bun by bun basis!

The picture below is how they look when baking - you pour the glaze into the pan and then sit the dough on top of this, let them rise, bake them, then flip the whole tray over once they are cooked.

These sticky buns were incredibly light - I loved the texture of the dough. Brioche can sometimes be quite dry with a coarse crumb, but not this recipe. You could really taste the honey in the glaze, which was good with the nuts. However I think the amount of glaze was a bit intense for the number of buns. Next time I would do a quarter recipe of glaze for a half batch, as opposed to the half recipe used this time. They were just too sticky and sweet (never thought that possible!) and the dough was so lovely in its own right.

Here they are close up in all their glorious stickiness. Beautiful.

With the other half of the brioche dough I made up some brioche raisin snails, a recipe baked by the other TWD bakers before I joined. These have a layer of vanilla pastry cream, topped with rum soaked raisins and a little cinnamon sugar. I only baked a couple and froze the rest of the roll to use later, so didn't bother icing them with the glaze - which I would definitely do next time as I think it would finish them off perfectly, as they needed a little more sweetness. (Or perhaps only as I was eating mouthfuls of this in between mouthfuls of the super sweet sticky bun?!) These were lovely too - the brioche is so light and they have just enough moisture from the custard and raisins.