Christmas Breakfast: Sticky Buns

I've had some Christmas breakfast successes, along with some failures. This year I'm trying a new recipe for Sticky Buns, from King Arthur Flour. They use a yeast dough - a source of some of my notable Christmas breakfast disasters. However, the recipe says you can assemble the buns the night before, and then just warm them up and cook them on Christmas morning. Sounds safe enough!

King Arthur Flour's Sticky Bun Recipe

All fall I kept promising myself that I'd test the recipe before Christmas. But here we are.... Christmas has arrived and I'm testing the recipe on Christmas morning.

You may wonder what instant mashed potatoes are doing in my kitchen....Well, apparently that's one of King Arthur's baking secrets. They're a dough ingredient. Who knew?




Through bread machine magic, the dough is kneaded and has risen.


I just put together the glaze and spread it in the pan. (Super easy).


Then pat out the dough, fill, roll, slice....it's ready to go....into the fridge overnight.

After an hour getting back to room temperature in the morning, I bake the buns.

Uh oh!! Disaster looms...




But when the smoke clears, the sticky buns look great.


Whoops - they come out of the pan without their glaze.


Quickly smearing the glaze in place makes things right again.


The results, I'm happy to report, were delicious!! I flirted with Christmas breakfast disaster, but escaped unscathed!

I definitely need a deeper cake pan for the recipe next time, so the glaze doesn't bubble up and out....that was the source of all that smoke!