When you’re craving sticky buns, and you have the time to let your yeast dough rise overnight in the refrigerator, you make Dorie Greenspan’s Pecan Honey Sticky Buns. Golden brioche dough that’s been baptized in honey. Christened with pecans. They are so worthy of a two-syllable damn.
But when you’re craving sticky buns RIGHT NOW, and you’re not looking for a religious experience, Ina Garten’s Easy Sticky Buns will do. Her recipe skips the whole dough-making process and uses defrosted puff pastry. You grab a muffin tin, and put a tablespoon of her butter-brown sugar mixture in each cup. Then you fill the puff pastry with brown sugar, cinnamon and raisins, roll it up, slice it, and place each piece in a muffin cup, spiral side up.
They will look weird. You’ll think you’re doing it wrong. But you’re not. Resist the urge to smash the dough down into the muffin cup.
If you follow the courage of your convictions, after 30 minutes in the oven, your pastry will have puffed, the butter-brown sugar mixture will have liquefied, and when you invert the pan – BOOM! – quickie sticky buns. Keep a box of puff pastry in your freezer, and you’ll be ready to make these babies at the first sign of a Snow Day, Sick Day or Saturday. Just like Ina does for Jeffrey.
Easy Sticky Buns
Adapted from Ina Garten’s “Barefoot Contessa Back to Basics”
Makes 12
•12 tablespoons (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
•1/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
•1/2 cup pecans, chopped in very large pieces
•1 package (17.3 ounces/2 sheets) frozen puff pastry, defrosted for the filling
•2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted and cooled
•2/3 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
•3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
•1 cup raisins
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place a 12-cup standard muffin tin on a sheet pan lined with parchment paper.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter and 1/3 cup brown sugar. Place 1 rounded tablespoon of the mixture in each of the 12 muffin cups. Distribute the pecans evenly among the 12 muffin cups on top of the butter and sugar mixture.
- Lightly flour a wooden board or stone surface. Unfold one sheet of puff pastry with the folds going left to right. Brush the whole sheet with half of the melted butter. Leaving a 1-inch border on the puff pastry, sprinkle each sheet with 1/3 cup brown sugar, 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon and 1/2 cup raisins. Starting with the end nearest you, roll the pastry up snugly around the filling, finishing the roll with the seam side down.
- Trim the ends of the roll about 1/2 inch and discard. Slice the roll in 6 equal pieces, each about 1 1/2 inches wide. Place each piece, spiral side up, in 6 of the muffin cups. Repeat with the second sheet of puff pastry to make 12 sticky buns.
- Bake for 30 minutes, until the sticky buns are golden to dark brown on top and firm to the touch. Allow to cool for 5 minutes only, invert the buns onto the parchment paper (ease the filling and pecans out onto the buns with a spoon), and cool completely.
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Those look so good. I have always been afraid of puff pastry, I may have to get over that fear to try this recipe!
These look so golden! I’m craving them, now. *sigh*
It is a good thing that I purchased a couple boxes of puff pastry, ’cause now I can have some more.
Oooey gooey and delicious! These look awesome!
Oh, geez. And I’d just bookmarked another cinnamon bun recipe from Apartment Therapy. These look awesome and rich and delicious and evil.
oh my goodness! i’ve got frozen puff pastry in the freezer as we speak. this this this is the recipe. thank you!
This is truly food porn!!! It is easy and so darn tempting! I like the fact that the puff pastry makes this a “light” sticky bun rather than a heavy doughnut like bun!
You need to come and make these… like when I get home from school this afternoon.
Wow! These look heavenly!
OMG……. made these….. ate these…. almost the whole darn tray… simplicity at its most decadent declicious! Spectacular
I so wish I wasn’t on a diet. I so wish I had some puff pastry in the freezer. The diet would be so off.
I totally thought I was doing it wrong when I made these, but they were great. Yours look delish.
Oh . . . YUM.
Oh, these look awesome! I wish I had made them now. Any left over?
These are great, particularly right out of the oven. I still want to make the real thing someday when I’m feeling brave. I’ve got your Dorie sticky bun post bookmarked!
Those sticky buns look really good!
OMG! Are you trying to kill my diet or what? Have to bookmark this for days when I’m not feeling so righteous.
I love yeast sticky buns but this sounds great and quick.
do you need to use muffin tins? how about a springform and cooking them all en masse? thanks!
OMG! These look GOOOOOOOOOD! *DROOL*. Its bad enough I sit at home watching the food network all day…but now this ….this is too much! I saw her make these this week and it took every strength I had not to start whipping these up. :) Now I may have to!
These look amazing, and I reeeally want to try them, but I only have an extra-large (6 cups total) muffin tin. I don’t want to buy a 12- cup one (almost every muffin recipe will work with a six-cup tin- you just get megamuffins- and I’m moving cross country soon). Do you think it would work if I attached both sheets together to form one long sheet- so that it’d be fatter when I roll it but the same length- then cut the finished log into six, to make extra-large sticky buns? Or, perhaps, baked the 12 called for together in a baking dish? I really want to make these but buying extra equipment at this point isn’t practical for me.
This looks fabulous! Yum!
I made these this morning for my bf’s game group. OMG, they’re amazing; good thing I was smart enough to set one aside for me! (I left out the nuts & they were still divine.)
i made these little devils and amaisingly georgeous and sooooo many different ways to serve them(infact so eveil i made myself give a few away so i didnt eat them all thanks for sharing xxxxx
These are great and easy to make. I am thinking that I can make them the night before and bake the next day. They look just like the picture. I also think a little less butter won't hurt anything.