Impossibly sticky, and that’s before the icing. The jam puddle at the bottom of the tin. Pull apart sweet buns are a nightmare to eat but such bliss.
These have leached a bit more than I’d calculate beforehand, all due to me being an idiot who shaped bottomless buns. They work very well if your filling is cinnamon sugar, raisins and nuts chopped fine, cream cheese, dried apricot paste (all of it delicious) – but not jam.
I know – you CAN just shape the dough into little pancakes, spoon the jam in the middle and seal the bun or rather hope to seal it well. But where’s the fun in that? Jammy half-burnt puddles on the baking tray are the cook’s premium, scraped off the warm tray once the buns have left it. Finger licking is, well, finger licking good and a sterile sweet bun must be incredibly boring.
I have made a zillion assorted buns in my baking career; apricot, cherry, honey, raisin, marzipan, blueberry and all very lovely but invariably messy to make, clean up and eat. I guess that’s just the beauty of them.
For the sourdoughphobes: replace the sourdough starter with 50g flour and 50g milk plus 15g fresh or 2 tsp instant yeast in the ferment ingredients. BTW I wonder why the word hasn’t caught on – yet?