Charlene Nero’s Cinnamon Buns
These are the most decadent cinnamon buns we have ever tasted. Really.
Created by Charlene Nero, owner and chef extraordinaire at Creemore’s Bank Café, they come studded with toasted pecans and local dried cranberries, and slathered in a house-made caramel glaze that is a symphony of demerara sugar and fresh butter and cream from the Alliston Creamery. Nero cooks the glaze until it forms a gooey, silken sauce that is literally finger-licking good. The bun itself is made from a brioche dough that has been lightened with Danish pastry. The result has an almost flaky texture that is still substantial enough to hold the glaze. The bun swirls around a cinnamon-spice-crumble mixture.
“We had to do a lot of tasting before we came up with just the right dough,” says Nero.
Charlene’s cinnamon buns can be eaten hot out of the oven on Saturday mornings at the café, though on market days you may have to wait in line. Or Charlene will sell you six or a dozen partially baked buns with a tub of glaze on the side. Take them home, put them in the freezer, then when you’re ready, bake them and ladle on the warmed glaze. A true champion of breakfasts.
The Bank Café and Catering 179 Mill Street, Creemore. www.bitemefoods.org 705-520-2233
Thank you for the very generous praise for our cinnamon buns. We’re glad you enjoyed them and we hope to be able to share them with many more of your readers. We did, however, want to clairfy one omission and give credit where it is due. We bake the buns every Saturday morning and make the gooey caramel topping fresh each week. But the hard work and baking brilliance that actually perfected the recipe for us and makes and shapes the dough into those fantastic little swirls comes from Sarah Hallett of Roseberry Farm (www.roseberryfarmcakes.com). Sarah works with us in the cafe when she has time, is our best right hand for catering jobs and runs her own baking business and stall at the Creemore Farmers Market. (Somehow she still has time for a life on top of all that.)
So, after you’ve dropped by for a capuccino and a warm cinnamon bun, be sure to stop by the market to taste some of Sarah’s other fantastic creations.
-Charlene Nero
Charlene Nero from Creemore, ON on May 18, 2011 at 8:54 pm |