Chocolate Sticky Buns

Sunday, August 13, 2006
Well, these are amazing. Imagine a tender, buttery brioche dough. Further imagine a lush chocolate ganache, a caramel sauce strewn with walnuts, and, just to gild the lily, handfuls of chocolate chips. Pretend that you never had the slightest interest in losing ten pounds. I just can't say enough about these rolls, except that it's a very good thing that I made these three days before I got my braces put on instead of three days after, because I don't think I could have smelled them and passed them up, and I would not get a gold star for being a good patient if I were to try to eat them with brand-new metal bands on my teeth.
First, let me say that I will never doubt Rose's helpful hints again. (Well, I probably will, just like my daughters ignore my helpful hints and then regret it. Or so they say). This is a very sticky dough, and after you've spread the ganache and the chocolate chips on it and rolled it up, it's even stickier. Rose suggests using dental floss to cut the roll into twelve pieces. When I made the caramel sticky buns, back in January, I thought the dental floss was a silly idea, and I used a knife. It was okay, but the dental floss trick is very slick, although it did make me feel a little like I was using a garrotte on someone.
The only slight imperfection was that the caramel was harder, and less gooey, than I'd hoped. It was surpassingly delicious, but not really caramel-y. I guess I should have used a candy thermometer, but, since I don't like making things that require candy thermometers, I pretended that this didn't.
When writing the previous entry, the sourdough wheat bread with seeds, I was in the process of deciding whether to go the bread-cheese-wine route or the cappuccino-chocolate sticky bun route for our mid-afternoon snack. I had to opt for the sticky buns because they are so wonderful. However, I had a small one.