Unbaked cinnamon swirl buns....how did you get here?
Well, even though I said I wasn't going to get into the whole lengthy explanation about why I made my mother cinnamon buns for her birthday instead of a cake....I'm going to do it anyway!
You see, I'm going on a bachelorette party weekend camping trip in Baltimore this Friday and coming back Monday. It's going to be amazing. Cold probably, but really awesome! There are about 21 of us ladies that will be in attendance and everyone (hopefully) will be contributing to the food cause. There is a small cabin there that has a small kitchen for which to cook in. I, being one of the biggest fans of breakfast you will find, volunteered to do breakfast for the troops Sunday morning. My friend's sister (who arranged the whole thing) requested that I do some sort of egg casserole and cinnamon swirl buns. Challenge accepted!
Now, when I started doing all of the planning for this my oldest sister laughed at me and asked why I wasn't just doing Pillsbury cinnamon buns. I stared at her for a good 30 seconds before laughing about the fact that I had never even considered that. I told her that would probably be smart since I had a busy week prior to leaving and prep might be tricky. And then I went ahead and did them from scratch anyway....cause ya know what? Homemade treats are ALWAYS better. (If you know what you're doing that is).
My plan was to prep the buns and then flash freeze them so that Saturday night I could just take them out of the freezer and let them get to room temp over night and rise. Then I can get up nice and early Sunday morning and just throw them in the oven so that the ladies can wake up to the smell of cinnamon wafting through the tiny cabin that only sleeps 10 of the 21 of us which is why myself and several others will be out in tents....but I digress. The tricky thing was this; I've never flash frozen cinnamon buns before and I was feeling skeptical about how well they'd rise a second time if they had to do it after coming out of a freezer. This is why my mother got buns for her birthday! She was my guinea pig. I whipped up a batch Saturday morning and froze them, then thawed them out on Sunday to serve.
Big success! They tasted just as good as if they were made fresh. Which was a huge relief to me! So last night, on night one of my prep week before the party, I made up 3 giant batches of dough and rolled them up to freeze. The picture is just one of the trays before I threw it in the freezer. I'll try to remember to take a picture of the fluffy, golden, frosted buns after I bake them Sunday morning...but its a camping trip....these ladies may be too hungry to wait for photo ops!
Now that the long story is out of the way....If anyone would like homemade cinnamon swirl buns prepped for anything and then frozen, it is officially on the list of things the Lady Baker would love to bake and sell to you! I often do these for Thanksgiving morning so that nobody has to worry about kitchen space to make breakfast when there are already 30 other things happening! And just a side note, I also make orange cranberry swirl buns that will knock your socks off! Both are perfect to pull from the freezer the night before and bake the next morning! You'll impress anyone with them and they don't have to know you didn't do it yourself!
....They are also really nice to have around in case you just want a cinnamon swirl bun or two for breakfast treats whenever! Who doesn't want that?!
