Mom’s Sticky Buns
Sticky Buns hot from the oven
Made a batch for New Years. My first memory of sticky buns was getting one from Vertin’s restaurant in Ely Minnesota as a special treat when we drove to Ely for Christmas. At some point growing up my mom found a recipe and started making them (usually around Christmas time but occasionally she’d make a big batch and we’d have some in the freezer for awhile).
I used a recipe from the Kitchenaid mixer book for sweet dough (mainly because I didn’t have enough flour for the original recipe below). Of course I didn’t follow exactly.
- 3/4 cup low-fat milk. I actually used 3/4 cup water plus 5 tablespoons or so of powdered milk since my Mom’s recipe used a lot of powdered milk.
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 packages active dry yeast
- 1/3 cup warm water
- 3 eggs (I actually only used 2 eggs, not intentionally but I think I was still mentally doing 1/2 of my mom’s recipe)
- 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
Place milk, sugar, salt and butter in a saucepan and heat until butter is melted and sugar dissolves. Let cool to lukewarm.
Place yeast and warm water into mixer bowl, add milk mixture and 5 cups of flour. Mix for about 2 minutes. Add additional flour about 1/2 cup at a time until the dough pulls away from the sides. Knead for an additional 2 minutes (Kitchen-aid mixers are really handy for this). Place dough in greased bowl and cover for about an hour until doubled in bulk (I guess I keep my house too cool so it took about 2 hours to double). Punch down shape as desired.
Make topping, I used 1 stick of butter, about 1/2 cup of brown sugar, 1/2 cup of white sugar, 1/4 cup of Karo syrup and a little bit of salt (maybe 1/2 teaspoon). Melt and bring to a quick boil on the stove and then pour into the bottom of a 9×12 and 8×8 pan. Add some walnuts or pecans.
I then cut the dough in quarters (to get a more managable size). Roll out to about a 9″x12″ rectangle (about an 1/8″ thick), spread with melted butter, cinnamon + sugar, chocolate chips, raisins, currants, chocolate chips, walnuts and/or pecans (for this batch I used butter, cinnamon+sugar, curants, mini-chocolate chips and walnuts). Roll up and slice into 8ths or 12ths and place into pans on top of the caramel topping. Continue with remaining dough. This made enough to fill a 9×12 pan and a 8×8 pan (about 40 buns altogether).
Let rise again for about an hour, then preheat oven to 350 degrees and cook for 20-25 minutes (until slightly brown on top, you should see the caramel bubbling up the sides).
Let cool for about 10 minutes and then flip over onto tin foil.
Original recipe sent from my brother
Some of the things written in this old recipe are hilarious! I had no recipe for the topping.
Sweet Roll Recipe for Dough
- 4 ½ cups of warm water
- 1 cup of dry nonfat milk
- 3 packages fast acting yeast
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 cup of butter-soft, not melted
- 4 eggs
- 12 cups all-purpose flour-separated
Place 4 ½ cups of warm (not Hot) water in a large bowl with dry milk, yeast, sugar, butter and eggs mix well. Add 6 cups of flour and beat with hand mixer for 5 minutes until very smooth and shiny.
Place 6 cups of flour in a large bowl. Pour batter on top and stir it rapidly all at once until all the flour is moist. Then knead adding ½ to 1 cup of additional flour as needed until dough is firm but slightly sticky. SPANK the mound of dough! It will be easy to handle when firm as a plump baby’s bottom.
Let bread rise 45-60 minutes or until doubled in size. Do not leave too long in a warm place or it will impair the bread! Knead down just enough to collapse the air bubbles and let raise 30-45 minutes. You can put in a cool place and let stand for an hour if you are busy.
Roll dough out on a lightly floured counter the thinner the better less a 1/8”
Spread melted butter over the dough staying away from the edges. Sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, currents over the butter.
Roll up jelly roll style and cut into sections and place into pan filled with caramel topping. Let rise one more time 30-45 minutes in a warm place. Bake at 375 for 20-30 minutes until golden brown. Take out of oven and turn upside down onto cookie sheet while still warm.
Caramel Topping
It is hard to say how many pans full this makes. Most of the caramel topping recipes I looked at used about the same roughly 1 cup of softened butter, 1 ½ cups of brown sugar, dash of salt, 1/3 cup of corn syrup plus walnuts or pecans. You will have to wing it on the topping.