Day 75 – Nigella’s cinnamon rolls

In these strange and stressful times, there is nothing more comfortin to me than baking. I made a double batch of these amazing banana and chia seed muffins to stick in the freezer, and was ready for more. I adore Nigella Lawson and have had my copy of How To Be A Domestic Goddess for around 15 years. Her writing is so warm and accessible – it’s as if a friend or big sister has written the recipe as apposed to a world-renowned chef. Earlier in the month Nigella had posted on Instagram about her March Cookalong being cinnamon buns, and I was intrigued.

Rather than cooking along with Nigella, as I originally thought it would be, the Nigella Cookalong is a competition where people all make the same recipe and submit it to her website, with the chance of winning a signed cookbook from Nigella. I was in! I’ve never cooked cinnamon buns before, in fact, I’ve only recently come round to eating cinnamon in sweet things, so this would be a challenge in every sense!

As I mentioned a while back, I make a lot of bread, but I’ve never made anything with any filling in, so this was quite strange at first. All the way through I felt like it wasn’t going well: the dough was too wet, the filling didn’t spread easy, and the buns we’re all odd shapes and sizes. However, once I took them out of the oven I realised all was not lost: they looked, and smelled incredible.

They were so good that James and I did a happy dance when I took them out of the oven! They were soft, sweet, and with a lovely warm (but not overpowering) cinnamon taste. Unfortunately, I think they could have done with a little bit longer in the oven, as although the outside buns were perfect, the ones towards the middle were a little uncooked underneath.

I would absolutely make these again, as although there were some uncooked, the ones that were tasted heavenly – the best comfort food for these weird times.

i entered the competition, and you can actually see my entry on Nigella’s website here – a fact I am ridiculously proud and happy about!