Cinnamon swirl buns

Not a lot beats freshly baked goodies, particularly those that aren't labour intensive in the slightest and flipping delicious. These cinnamon swirl buns are perfect for brunch with a nice hot coffee, which is how I just enjoyed them! I used a London Eats recipe for these beauties. 

You can top them with sugar nibs (which is how the Swedes enjoy them) but I wanted to keep them as fuss-free as possible…more importantly though I don't own sugar nibs (though if you wanted to give it a go I'm sure granulated sugar would do the trick!)

To make 12 cinnamon swirl buns (actually 14, you'll see later) you will need:

The buns
2 tsp dried yeast
50g sugar
60g soft butter
150ml milk
1 egg (actually half an egg - the other half you can use to glaze!)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cardamon seeds (I did this by hand using a pestle and mortar)
325g strong white bread flour 

The filling
60g soft butter
60g caster sugar
3 tsp ground cinnamon

Optional
1/2 egg plus sugar nibs or granulated sugar to decorate

If you have a bread maker then making the dough is super easy - throw all the ingredients in and set off on the standard 'dough' cycle (on my machine this was 2hr 20mins). 

If making by hand then it's a case of rubbing in the butter to the flour, throwing in the yeast, sugar, cardamon and salt to this, mixing all the wet ingredients together (milk, half an egg) and slowly adding this to the dry ingredients. Get your hands in the bowl and work it until you have a stretchy dough. With the hands-on method it's then a case of leaving for a few hours in a warm spot to allow the dough to double in size. 

With either of these methods you can pop the dough in the fridge and wait until you're ready to use it - in my case I set off the dough in the machine in the evening and popped it in the fridge once it was done ready for baking in the morning!

When you're ready to get baking, give the dough a quick knead before rolling out on a well-floured surface into a long rectangle, about 5mm thick. Mix up your filling (butter, sugar, cinnamon) and spread all over your dough - I found the most effective way of doing this was with my fingertips so that I got it nice and even and right up to the edges. 

Roll the dough up into a sausage, take off the two end pieces to smarten it up, and slice up into 12 pieces. To stop the buns all merging into one enormous cinnamon monster I placed the slices cut-side-up in muffin cases. You then need to leave them for about an hour to let them rise.

Pre-heat your oven to 210C. At this point you can then brush the rolls with the other 1/2 of the egg and sprinkle with sugar. Pop in the hot oven for 6 minutes until they are lovely and golden (and filling your kitchen with a spicy scent). That gives you just enough time to let the kettle boil before enjoying with a cup of coffee.