Sticky Buns in the morning.

This recipe is most fun when made as a pre-work baking date with a friend. In my case, I chose Greg. We only decided about half way through to include this on the blog, so some of the initial directions are a bit fuzzy. I recommend only making this if you already have a pretty good idea about bread dough.

First steps (optional):
Make some coffee.
Take some cold medicine.
make sure to brush your teeth

Gather:

Pasta for breakfast
a lot brown sugar
a lot flour
a lot of butter/ earth balance
5 over-ripe bananas
2ish cups of walnuts
yeast
white sugar
cinnamon
water
hugs

To begin, make your dough.

Go to grocery to store to buy white flour after you realize you have rye flour, soy flour, whole wheat flour, corn meal and pancake mix where you thought the white flour would be.

Before you leave be sure to add four cups of 100 degree water to a 12 qt bowl with .5 cup of white sugar and 2 TBSP of yeast.

While you're at the store. The yeast will reconstruct their civilization from their cryogenically freeze dried remnants. This process is exothermic, which you would be able to feel if you weren't at the store.

By the time you return, the yeast will have evolved into an industrious society that produces gluten by-products through the respiration of sucrolose, (CITE THIS) and will be ready.

Add some heaping handfuls (I started with 4) of your recently acquired white flour to the yeast civilization. Stir the flour in with a spoon and keep thickening gradually. When you reach the point when you can no longer mix with a spoon, use your hands! The flour will be sticky, so be sure to "clean" your hands with more flour while you mix and eventually begin to form a ball. Transfer the dough to your countertop But FIRST STOP

Thoroughly cover the countertop with many handfuls of flour before setting your dough on it.

Kneed the dough like you're giving CPR until you press your finger into the dough and it does not press back (the finger indentation stays). Or you can also just kneed the dough until its almost not sticky anymore.

Coat a large bowl with canola oil

Make the dough into a ball that somewhat resembles a brain by pulling the top dough down and under and then forming a funnel "V" shape with the palms of your hands and rubbing them back and forth with the V shaped dough wedge in between them. Brain wrinkles are a sign of superior intelligence, but research has definitively demonstrated that there is an inverse correlation between intelligence and tastiness, at least in terms of sticky bun dough, so keep the top smooth. (See illustration on the pizza dough post, forthcoming)

Put your dough brain into the large oil coated bowl and leave it in a warm place.

Let the dough rise for a duration equivalent to the time it takes to look for clip art, give up and draw a Macintosh 128 K with a heart diskette using Adobe Illustrator.

Punch down the dough (be nice)

Let the dough rise again while you read about the assassination attempt against Hitler by Georg Elser as written by Derek Jensen (about 4 pages, with time allowed for a verbal summary of the book so far)

Break the nuts gently by hand and coat them with brown sugar and put them in a hot place (like the oven) for 20 minutes at 350. You may use pecans or walnuts or hazelnuts or testicles.

Take your over-ripe bananas and whip them together with a handful of dark brown sugar. We added a cap-ful of Hazelnut liqueur.

Melt a half stick of butter in a pan on the stove over low-med heat. Add the whipped brown sugar and banana mix, and beat it constantly until its creamy and bubbly.

DON'T FORGET ABOUT THE NUTS!

When the nuts are done, chop them into spreadable pieces. Place them in a bowl and set aside. Mix cinnamon and sugar together, about 1:3, and also set it aside.

Re-flour your countertop surface and roll the dough into a sheet just slightly thinner than corrugated cardboard. Cover the dough thinly with banana. Then semi-thickly sugar. Then sparsely with nuts.

Roll the sheet up. Some of the dough will stick to the counter while you are rolling. It is useful to have your friend scrape that up as you go and keep it with the dough. We used a meat cleaver, but a metal spatula would be fine, I'm sure. When it's all done, squish in the sides of the cylinder so they are about flat.

Cut the dough log into 2-3 inch sections, and place on a buttered baking sheet, flat side down. They need about 17 minutes to cook, but check on them at 10-12 to make sure this seems right.

While the fetus buns are in the oven, mix a lot of brown sugar with a lot of butter. Like a cup of sugar, and third of a tub of earth balance. Over medium heat, bring this to a boil, stirring constantly. Then add some more butter if it's getting too thick. More sugar if it's too thin. If you need more, it's easy to make, and if there's too much, you will have extra-sticky sticky buns.



Play midwife/obstetrician to the buns, cover them with syrup and nuts.




Finally, bask in the deliciousness you have created.(Or in my case, rush off to work where they fire you. Fuckers.)