Tuesdays with Dorie: Pecan Honey Sticky Buns

This is my first Tuesdays with Dorie recipe, I *just* joined and I am so excited to be part of this bake-a-long. The book is Baking: From My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, it is huge and filled with tons of recipes for baked goods. There are so many fabulous blogs over there with even more fabulous pictures of the finished product. And every week one of the members chooses another recipe from the book for everyone to make, then we post about how we did it, what we thought about the recipe and pictures, all on Tuesdays.

This week's recipe was chosen by Madam Chow of Madam Chow's Kitchen. The sticky buns are made with a brioche dough, which you make first and have to refrigerate overnight. I was a little intimated at first because the recipe called for a stand mixer (which I don't have) but also said you could use a wooden spoon too. I ended up using a combination of a wooden spoon and my hands, which was sort of fun, squishing the butter into the dough. I was afraid it wouldn't rise, because this was really the first true bread I've made, but luckily it made it through. The next morning I pulled it out of the fridge and divided it into two, one part for the buns and one part for a loaf of brioche. The brioche part just went into a buttered loaf pan with an egg wash. The buns got a layer of butter and cinnamon sugar and then after being rolled up and sliced and were placed into the baking pan with the topping of honey, brown sugar, butter and pecans that I had made earlier.
I loved these sticky buns, they were so good. My husband said they were "dangerously good" which is completely true because the recipe (dough, topping and all) uses almost four whole sticks of butter. Tasty but not so healthy. I'll probably save this recipe for special occasions, not only for the butter issue but because it is rather time consuming.

Also the separate loaf of brioche I made was delicious, it has the consistency and flavor of croissants, very buttery and flaky but not too sweet. Wonderful with a smearing of apricot jam.
I'm already ready for next week's recipe of French Chocolate Brownies chosen by Di's Kitchen Notebook.