Chocolate and cinnamon buns
- Published: 21 Sep 15
- Updated: 18 Mar 24
Whether you call them cinnamon buns or cinnamon rolls, the addition of chocolate in this recipe by the Nordic Bakery is a heavenly one.
Fancy a weekend baking project? Give our classic croissants recipe a whirl.
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Makes 11 large buns
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Hands-on 35 min, cook time 20-25 mins, plus proving
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Ingredients
For the dough
- 570ml lukewarm milk
- 150g caster sugar
- 45g fresh yeast (or easy blend dried yeast according to manufacturer’s instructions)
- 1 tbsp cardamom seeds, crushed with a pestle and mortar
- 180g unsalted butter, melted
- 1 egg
- 1kg plain flour
For the filling
- 100g unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
- 200g dark brown soft sugar
- 3 tbsp ground cinnamon
- 85g chocolate buttons
For the glaze
- 85g caster sugar
- 1 tbsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
You will also need
- 2 baking trays, lined with non-stick baking paper
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Method
- To make the dough, put the milk, sugar, yeast, cardamom, melted butter and egg in a food processor or mixer with the dough hook. With the motor running, gradually add the flour until it is all incorporated and the dough has come together.
- Transfer the dough to a bowl, cover with a clean tea towel and leave to prove in a warm place for 1 hour, or until it has doubled in size.
- Punch down the dough and transfer to a lightly-floured surface. Using a rolling pin, roll it out until it is about 30x80cm and 7mm thick.
- For the filling, spread the butter evenly over the dough and sprinkle the sugar, cinnamon and chocolate buttons all over the top.
- Roll the dough up from the long side. Cut into 6cm rolls. Carefully transfer and arrange the rolls cut side down on the prepared baking trays, cover with a tea towel again and leave to prove in a warm place for 30-60 minutes, until almost doubled in size.
- Preheat the oven to 200°C/fan 180°C/gas 6. Bake the buns in the preheated oven for 20-25 minutes, or until golden brown.
- To make the glaze, put the sugar, lemon juice and 100ml water in a small saucepan and bring to the boil. Simmer for 10-15 minutes, until slightly thickened. The glaze will still be quite watery.
- Remove the buns from oven, transfer to a wire rack and brush the glaze generously over them. Leave to cool before serving.
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ok we had our first go at this recipe (if honest it was out first go at any serious baking & I have long covid just to add to the ‘fun’ of it all).
We’d discovered how good freshly made cinnamon buns with decent coffee at an artisan bakers (in London could be ) so invested in a KitchenAid mixer & cracked on.
We switched the plain flour for wholewheat but otherwise stuck to the above recipe. Even managed to source the fresh yeast which wasnt easy in the northern wilds of Lancashire.
Up until the latter stages all seemed to go ish to plan & even rolling up the final dough wasnt so bad . We likely made individual buns bigger than prescribed 2.5 inches raw in height as the ones we had at the bakery were BIG.
When they finally came out of the oven they looked like cinnamon buns albeit giant cinnamon buns . Advice was to let them cool before eating so after another 20 minutes and making a coffee we tucked in . The orange glaze wasnt as orangey as we had hoped (we wanted to use yuzu as my partner is Japanese but thought we’d play safe first time). However the bun was light moist and chocolatey . What we did find though was the centre was almost but not as well baked as the outer.
Was this down to the flour ie not being plain ? Should we have let the buns have longer on the second proof ( they had 30 minutes and looked well risen) or simply should have been smaller buns to begin with ?
Any thoughts , comments or sarcasm well come as cooking / baking is part of my long covid comeback and hope to do more
thanks – Phil & Emiko
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Hi Phil & Emiko,
Congratulations on giving this one a go! It sounds like you had fun. To start with answering your questions, first and foremost the type of flour you use is hugely important to any recipe. Whole wheat flour is much denser, and often much more hydrated than plain. If you used 100% wholewheat, I can imagine it would result in a very dense bun! Following proving times is always tricky because every environment is different, so it’s always good to follow the “or until it has doubled in size” mantra.
If you’d like to use wholewheat flour in the future, we would suggest starting with replacing it 50/50 with plain flour. Even then your dough will take longer to rise because of the density, and might need a pinch more yeast to give it a boost.
You’re welcome to add more orange, to your taste. Yuzu sounds great, too, I would give it a try!
These buns are intended to be large.
Hope that helps and best of luck with your baking journey, hope you continue to enjoy it!