No-Yeast Mini Cinnamon Buns

For the past few days, I've been craving anything cinnamony, the options were narrowed down to baked cinnamon churros, cinnamon pretzels, baked cinnamon donuts or of course, the might cinnamon rolls! All these sounded crazily appealing but I just really wanted something fairly quick and easy and pretty foolproof too and the weather looked pretty horrid so I thought nooo way yeasty breads so pretzels and donuts were out of the way. And I recently spotted some quick recipes without yeast for cinnamon rolls so I quickly ran down to the kitchen with my laptop and gathered the ingredients. I love it how cinnamon baked goods don't need any super fancy ingredients you wouldn't already have in your pantry. I guess it's because the star of them all is, to be honest, just the cinnamon!!

Oh yeah, and I know I said that I won't be cooking anymore these holidays, but just this one I couldn't resist okay? And another thing was I didn't have buttermilk, so usually I just substituted it with some regular milk and lemon but on the day, I ran out of lemons and decided to put it a fair amount of orange juice instead of lemon. Aaaand after baking it I realised that my baking soda was kinda expired and also I probably just kneaded the dough for way longer than 2 minutes. So I wasn't really sure if it was one of these or all of these combos that led to my cinnamon buns being a little tough albeit still very yummy. But I am totally sure that it was completely my fault that it turned out that way but that if you guys follow this recipe carefully, checking expiry dates on all your ingredients, you'll be good to go for a softer bun. I just had to pop mine in the microwave for 25 seconds and it became quite soft anyway so it wasn't such a big deal, just that maybe I'll have to buy a new packet of baking soda and lemon the next time I go shopping because I'll never know when I'll crave for these cinnamon buns again!

No-Yeast Mini Cinnamon Buns

Makes 20 mini buns (or12 medium buns)

Recipe Adapted from Sprinkled with Flour

For the dough:

1 cup buttermilk 
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 egg
3 to 3 1/2 cups flour (I used around 3 1/4 cups)

1. Preheat oven to 135 C (375 F) and line two 1/3 cup capacity muffin tins with baking paper or just spray with cooking spray or lightly grease with butter
2. In a medium bowl, mix together the brown sugar, baking soda, salt, vanilla and egg. Add the buttermilk, then the flour. Stir until thoroughly combined. 3. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for a minute or two. Cut dough in half and roll the dough into a 30cm (12inch) square. 
4. Spread with half of the butter butter, then sprinkle with half the cinnamon sugar mixture.5. Roll the dough into a log. Stretch the log slightly as you roll to keep a tight seam. Cut dough in half, then into fifths (So in total now, you've got 10)
6. Repeat with the other half of the dough
7. Place on the greased or lined baking tins and bake for around 15 minutes or until golden brown. Allow the muffins to cool for about 5 minutes, then remove them from pans to a cooling rack.

For the Filling:

5 tbsp butter, softened (I used half butter, half reduced fat margarine)

1 cup brown sugar

1 1/4 tsp cinnamon

Mix thoroughly sugar and cinnamon and set aside until ready to sprinkle over dough

For the Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
2-3 tbsp milk
1/4 tsp vanilla

Combine all ingredients and whisk until thoroughly combined and drizzle on completely cooled cinnamon buns.

\