One Bad Pun and One Baking Tip
So off and on over the last couple of years I’ve been trying to nail down the art of baking sticky buns. I had recipes from America’s Test Kitchen and the Joy of Cooking that were almost but not quite what I was aiming for. So I took the Joy of Cooking recipe and tweaked it by adding a small amount of cinnamon to the dough and a small amount of vanilla extract to the glaze. That was an improvement, but they were still a little dense in texture. So on the last batch, I used cake flour instead of all purpose flour. I really do think it made a big difference – the buns felt a lot lighter to chew. (Don’t get me wrong, they’re still absurdly dense and sticky. They have a name to live up to.)
So in order to get the cinnamon and brown sugar filling onto the dough, I use a sifter to avoid clumps that will crystallize during the baking and hurt the texture. While I was making the buns the other night, I had to look for the sifter, and as I was talking to myself, I couldn’t help remembering that I have another sifter the exact same shape and size. So my talking to myself to find the object became a wonderful Return of the Jedi pun, as in my worst James Earl Jones voice I intoed:
SIFTer . . . So, you have a twin SIFTer . . .
Fortunately, Pattie did not leap up, yell “NOOO!” and proceed to chop off my hand. Yet another reason I’m a lucky guy.
About Dave Thomer
Born and raised in Philadelphia. Studied philosophy at Fordham University in the Bronx, where I made many great friends and met my wonderful wife. We moved back to Philadelphia, where I studied philosophy some more and became a teacher. Online and off, I'm looking for ways that we can be better citizens and build stronger communities.