The Great Cinnamon Bun Taste-Off

We have a birthday tradition in our family … and of course it involves food!  You get to choose a special treat breakfast.  For the past three or four years now, my son consistently has chosen cinnamon buns for his birthday. 

I’ve always been a little scared of making anything with yeast except for pizza dough.  But I ventured into bread-making this year and my confidence is at an all-time high.  I decided that I couldn’t take the risk on the day of his birthday to attempt my first cinnamon buns.  So I set out to practice and perfect.  I scoured the internet to find recipes that appealed to me and in the spirit of the holidays, I’m going to test, test, test and give, give, give.

I’ve chosen three scumptialicious-looking recipes.  Seriously, my mouth was watering just reading the recipes *wipes drool from keyboard*.

I tried one recipe, every other day and shared with our most awesomazing neighbours, the Ryans and the James’, and my sister, brother-in-law, and parents.  These recipes make a lot of buns.  *Geesh*.

Everyone weighed in on the presentation, taste, texture, gooeyness, and overall yum factor.

Here are the three recipes:

#1 Cinnamon Buns That’ll Make You Weak In The Knees by Bite Me More

#2 Homemade Cinnamon Roll Pull Apart Bread by Pinch of Yum (adapted from Bea Ojakangas)

#3 Cinnamon Rolls by Ree | The Pioneer Woman

The most interesting outcome of this experiment is that everyone really does have different taste.  Some prefer gooey, others think gooey is overrated.  Some like a more bread-like dough, while others want it doughy and tender.  Some like lots of icing, some prefer a scant smattering.  So I will share the results of our taste-off, but the bottom line is I would make each and every one of these recipes again.  Which one would depend on my mood!

The toughest thing about making all three recipes was getting the cook time right.  If you over-cook them, they become tough or dry.  One pan I overcooked ended up with a layer of burned sugar on the bottom *yuck*.  If you under cook, you’re left with under-baked dough in the centre.  Having cooked 12 or 13 pans of cinnamon buns (I lost count), I think I can visually tell now when to pull them out of the oven, but seriously, there’s no easy way to know for sure.  You want them brown on top, but not overly brown.

Also, if you over-crowd your pan, the buns in the centre take longer to cook, while the ones touching the edges of the pan start to burn.  I tried one pan with the buns spaced so that they wouldn’t touch while cooking – These, in my opinion weren’t as yummy.  The sweet spot seemed to be 7 buns in a round 8” pan. 

The Pull Apart recipe called to bake the cinnamon rolls in a “loaf” on a pan.  These were the ones with the most significant ooze and sugar burn.  Pulling these out of the oven before the sugar started to burn was critical to them being edible. 

The Pioneer Woman’s dough was the simplest to make and didn’t contain eggs.  Just mix and let rise.  The other two required kneading.  Not a big deal for me because I have a stand mixer, but the Pull Apart Dough caused my mixer to shut down for risk of overheating.

The Pull Apart recipe appealed to those who preferred a cinnamon bun that was less sweet.  It had more of a sweet-bread texture.  The other two were more like what you would find at a Cinnabon.

Most people enjoyed the texture of the Pioneer Woman’s dough.  So in a stroke of brilliance, I tried one final pan using her dough and the icing from Bite Me More’s Make You Weak In The Knees cinnamon buns.  This is when the heavens opened up and angels began to sing – seriously. They were so good, I wanted to keep the entire pan to myself.

The Roundup

#1 Cinnamon Buns That’ll Make You Weak In The Knees by Bite Me More
Score:  8.7/10

This cinnamon bun got good scores all around.  Everyone LOVED the icing on this one.  Even people who don’t typically go for cream cheese.   

#2 Homemade Cinnamon Roll Pull Apart Bread by Pinch of Yum (adapted from Bea Ojakangas)
Score:  8.4/10

The Pull Apart recipe appealed to those who preferred a cinnamon bun that was less sweet.  It had more of a sweet-bread texture.  The other two were more like what you would find at a Cinnabon.  This recipe featured the least-favoured topping.

#3 Cinnamon Rolls by Ree | The Pioneer Woman
Score:  9.1/10

Big hit with everyone.  This recipe makes a lot of icing and you can literally drown the cinnamon buns.  If you like gooey, definitely try this one.  The one disclaimer I have for the topping on this one is that I used 1/4 cup of maple syrup instead of the maple syrup flavouring and coffee … I *hate* coffee.

The clear winner was #3 Cinnamon Rolls by Bree | The Pioneer Woman, but if you like cream cheese icing, you may want to switch up the topping!

No one was harmed in this experiment, except for the occasional scale creep.  These are seriously not low fat and sampling that many in the matter of a couple days did a little number on my digestive system.  I recommend exercising as much moderation as you can possibly muster. 

So in a couple of weeks when my soon-to-be teenager celebrates his 13^th birthday, I’m armed with my new-found confidence in cooking with yeast and the perfect cinnamon bun recipe.  Lucky kid, eh?