Waking up is hard to do…. — UNLESS you are waking up to a sweet, sticky pastry packed full of cinnamon and topped with a deliciously creamy dulce de leche caramel sauce! Actually, you probably won’t even want to sleep at all when you have these waiting for you in the kitchen.
Since I still had half of our Homemade Puff Pastry dough left in the freezer (even after making those aaaaaamazing Candied Pecan Cheese Danishes!), I knew I had to make something else soon. I mean, I wouldn’t want to take up that extra half of an inch of freezer space and all. Some friends were visiting us in Nashville this past weekend. What kind of host would I be if I didn’t make a homemade pastries for me them to have before their flight left on Sunday morning, anyway? A skinnier one, probably. But that isn’t important. Moving on…
Since I had the Puff Pastry Dough already made and thawed it for a few hours in the fridge, the rest was simple! If you haven’t made our puff dough, well… make it! Or I guess you can buy the frozen stuff. That’ll work too. If I had not eaten all of the Baked Candied Pecans, I would have throw a bunch of those in for the tops of the buns. But, I may have eaten every single one that was left. That day. In an hour. So, I decided to make caramel topping instead.
Dulce de leche is a simple, rich caramel sauce that is perfect to accompany these buns. This is made by slowly heating sweetened milk until it caramelizes into pure love. My recipe made enough for me to top the buns with and still be left with a jam jar full to use on ice cream, cake or even in my coffee like I did this morning! It is simple, but time consuming. You just have to be patient and keep swimming stirring. This would be a great time to organize your RSS feeds (adding us, of course!) or browse foodgawker or Pinterest.
I made these the night before, and they were delicious after just a few seconds in the microwave. The puff pastry gives it tons of buttery layers, with the outside crispy and the inside left perfectly fluffy. The caramel dulce de leche sauce becomes best friends with the cinnamon buns and sticky brown sugar filling.
Serve with coffee and you may actually want to wake up on a Monday. Enjoy, y’all!
- 1 recipe puff pastry dough or 1 box frozen puff dough, thawed in refridgerator
- 1 and ½ cups brown sugar
- 2 sticks butter (16 tablespoons... sorry, not sorry!), divided & room temp.
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon
- Baked Candied Pecans or pecans, optional
- 1 can evaporated milk (12 oz)
- 1 can condensed milk (14 oz)
- 1 tablespoon corn syrup
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- salt, pinch
- Pre-heat oven to 400 F.
- Take 13 tablespoons of the room temp. butter and mix with ½ cup brown sugar.
- Spoon mixture into muffin pan molds, about a tablespoon in each, making 12 in total.
- Melt and let cool the remaining 3 tablespoons of butter
- If using homemade pastry dough, roll out on lightly floured surface to large rectangle, about 16x24" about ¼" thick. For frozen pre-rolled puff dough, split the recipe among two sheets.
- Brush the dough with the cooled melted butter.
- Combine the cinnamon and remaining 1 cup of brown sugar and sprinkle evenly on dough, leaving about ½" border of the dough.
- Roll the dough to create a log shape. Trim the ends slightly.
- Cut the log into 12 pieces (6 for each roll if using the smaller frozen puff dough).
- Place the cut pieces cut side down into the muffin pan molds.
- Bake at 400 until golden, about 15-20 minutes.
- Let cool for no more than 5 minutes (the filling will harden to the pan if too cool!) and turn out.
- Use a fork to help the filling out. You will flip the pastries from how they were baked, ending with the filled muffin pan bottoms as the pastry sticky tops.
- Mix condensed milk, evaporated milk, corn syrup, baling soda and salt in saucepan.
- Over medium-low heat, cook until thickened. Stir OFTEN. Stir continuously when mixture is near finished state.
- This will take 30-35 minutes. It is finished when you can drag the wooden stir spoon across the pan and the line remains for an extended period.
- If you have any burned material, simple strain it out.
- Let cool and top buns and enjoy!
- Place the remaining sauce in a jar to keep for ice cream, cake or coffee.
- Visit SouthernFATTY.com for more and to let us know how you enjoyed these!
What is your favorite morning pick-me-up food?
Yikes, I just tried these and not sure what I did wrong but they turned out almost too greasy to eat. I love butter but they were completely soaked in it! Any suggestions?
Yikes! I’ve never had that happen… The only thing I can think of is to cut how much you put in the mold bases. Did you use homemade or pre-made puff pastry? Used the right amount of brown sugar? It should caramelize instead of just get greasy… :-/
Wow those look incredible! I think you just made the greatest sticky buns ever made. Going to bookmark this recipe for sure 🙂
Thanks! They were deeeelicious. Let me know how it goes when you make them!
Oh. My. Word. I can just feel my thighs getting fatter looking at these! Totally worth it though. 😉
Hah! I’m pretty sure my teeth were tingling after I ate them. Suuuuuuugar rush!