Baked Bun

Its been awhile since anything was baked in our household. Having a bun in the oven seems to have created a reverse-nesting instinct in us, despite all that would ordinarily be predicted. The main thing we did was hire a full time helper. She started on Saturday and has already made a huge improvement on our quality of life. So much so that the urge to cook has been revived! That's why I decided to actually bake some buns on Buddha's Birthday . As with any desire I've had to bake something bready, my first port of call was Dan Lepard, whose recipes never seem to go amiss. Having said that, I've never been good at following instruction, and so the following is slightly varied from the original (per the link).

CINNAMON BUNS
400ml milk
1 whole Nutmeg
4 cloves
Finely grated zest of ½ lemon
500g strong white flour, plus extra for shaping
80g unsalted butter
1 medium egg
70g caster sugar
1 sachet fast-action yeast
1½ tsp salt
Oil for kneading

For the filling
3 Finncrisp/Ryvita
150g soft brown sugar
3 tsp ground cinnamon
Butter
Beaten egg, to finish

Put the milk, nutmeg, cloves and lemon zest in a saucepan.
Turn on the heat and whisk in and 50g flour till it reaches boiling point. It thickens quite quickly once it hits boiling point, so turn off the heat asap.
Stir in the butter and leave until warm.

Beat in the egg, sugar and yeast, followed by the remaining flour and salt.
Mix to a soft and very sticky dough. This was wetter than I'd expected, and was so sticky that it was spattered in clumps on the side of the mixing bowl/saucepan.
Cover and leave for 10 minutes. I was a little worried that Hong Kong would be too warm, but this worked fine.

Oil a worktop and knead the dough on it for about 10 seconds, then put the dough back in the bowl, cover and leave for 10 minutes. Repeat this kneading twice more at 10-minute intervals, then leave the dough for an hour.

The recipe recommends lining the baking tin with nonstick paper. I was using disposable trays and so I didn't bother.

Grind the Finncrisp/Ryvita in a food processor until very fine, then mix in the sugar, cinnamon and some butter. I really struggled to get this properly fine and think a pestle and mortar would work better (or the alternative of taking a rolling pin to a bag of the biscuits).

Flour the worktop and rolling pin (the dough is still sticky).
Roll the dough to about 0.75cm thin.
Dab a little butter over the dough and sprinkle the cinnamon mixture evenly over it.
Roll it up tightly and cut into 2-3cm slices.
Lay these cut side up in the tin, cover and leave for 45 minutes.

Brush with beaten egg and bake at 190C (200C fan-assisted)/425F/gas mark 7 for 15-20 minutes, until brown on top.

The result wasn't as sweet as I expected and I think I may ice or frost these going forward. All in all though, it was an easy recipe for a rainy type day (or in my case, a GMAT study day).