Pillowy-soft sweet rolls dripping with plum-colored blackberry caramel and toasted hazelnuts should definitely be making an appearance on your breakfast table ASAP.
Sweet buns of any kind have my name written all over them. Cinnamon rolls, pecan sticky buns, sugar-dusted morning buns…I’m down with all of them. I’ve made homemade rolls a few times with disappointing results. Dense, dry dough seemed to be my Achilles heel when trying out different recipes…but I knew there was something better out there because I’d tasted it before.
I looked to America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated for help with the dough because, well, their recipes are perfect. They experiment and test everything so thoroughly that there really is no doubt in my mind that every recipe is the very best it can be. Buttermilk softens and tenderizes this dough, giving it a rich flavor but leaving the buns light.
When I decided a sticky bun recipe was in order, I was also watching Brunch at Bobby’s and he was making blackberry-hazelnut biscuit rolls, where biscuit dough was subbed for the soft sweet roll dough. At that moment, I knew that combining both recipes was necessary…it was destiny. The result was everything I wanted: soft, wispy-as-a-cloud dough with a fruity blackberry-brown sugar filling and topped with gleaming sweet and tangy blackberry caramel. And hazelnuts because we don’t use them enough.
Drizzle with some crème fraîche to really gild the lily.
Sticky buns are a labor of love, but when you smell the baking sweet dough wafting through your house and pull beautiful, caramel-y sticky buns that YOU made out of your oven, it will all be worth it. This recipe works with any fruit-nut combination you like so make it your own!
[tasty-recipe id=”31056″]
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