TWD, Baking with Julia: Pecan Sticky Buns

As part of Tuesdays with Dorie, using the book Baking with Julia I made the pecan sticky buns.

My husband is allergic to nuts, and I was either going to leave off the pecans, replace them with sunflower seeds or just skip this one, but he suggested I go make them at someone else's house. It is quite an intimidating recipe. Check out some chatter about it here. You can read the recipe on Eat Drink Man Woman Dogs Cat and Cookies on Friday

I started the brioche the night before. I thought it would be most powerful to use the dough attachment on my food processor, but by putting the ingredients in before the dough blade, some brioche dough got between the bowl and the blade causing my usually all powerful food processor to stop and overheat. I had to finish up the beating of the dough with my hand mixer. After I overheated half the appliances in my house, I couldn't believe how beautiful this dough was looking. I woke up at 6 am and completed the assembling and rolling of the buns. They looked beautiful and made my car smell amazing during my commute into work. I put them in the fridge at work because I didn't want them to get too big. Then, around 2 in the afternoon they totally started to shrink. I started to freak out a little bit and took them out and put them on my desk. I am sure people who walked by thought it was hilarious that I had sticky buns rising on my desk while working on my computer at an art museum. That worked and they started looking abd smalleing beautiful again. Then the end of the day arrived, and I was so excited to get on over to my coworker's house and bake these! I skipped the nuts in the filling so I didn't have to use any pecans in the house of someone who is deathly allergic, and I just slipped the nuts under the buns at the last minute prior to baking. My coworker made dinner, and I showed her what a beautiful book Baking with Julia is. After dinner we unearthed these beauties from the pan and finally got to try them. My coworker's husband said they were great. My coworker is unusually picky about food and said they were ok. I couldn't believe she said they were ok! Brioche! Butter! Brown sugar! Pecans! Almost breaking my amazingly tough food processor!! She said they were sweet, and I said "You drink Coca-cola!" Oh well, you can't win them all.

At that point I got their whole family history including when her husband's grandmother rode a horse to work and how his grandfather was blind but did not have glass eyes. We watched the dogs (the same ones I dogsit every so often).

We looked at their pond where they had like a million tadpoles. They are going to have an insane number of frogs! Then, my coworker's husband gave me a whole big bag of Snow Geese he hunted near Plattsburgh, NY. Here is a video of how to prepare them. All in all it was a very fun time. Made me wish I tried to cook dessert in everyone else's kitchens! My coworker said next time I dogsit I could leave behind some dessert for her husband, and I am thinking about chocolate peanut butter whoopie pies from the Joy the Baker cookbook. I thought she would also be excited about the recipe, but said she does not like peanut butter because Reese's peanut butter cups are too dry. My boss thought this was crazy.

With some leftover dough I made my husband one at home without pecans. He seemed to appreciate it.

The next day at work she brought the leftovers in. Oh the flakiness! The egg flavor in the dough! I pretty much died and went to pastry heaven. These couldn't be more fabulous! Check out the other bakers here.