Recipes at the top, sweet blog post below.
Kira's Sweet Buns
Dough Ingredients
- 1 cup Lukewarm Whole Milk
- 2 ¼ tsp Active Dry Yeast
- 4 tbsp Unsalted Irish Butter
- ⅛ cup Truvia Baking Blend
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 Egg
- 1 tsp Vanilla Extract
- ¼ tsp Ground Star Anise
- 3 ½ cups King Arthur Organic All-Purpose Flour
Filing Ingredients
- ⅓ cup Light Brown Sugar
- ½ tbsp Ground Cinnamon
- 1 tbsp Penzey’s Pie Spice
- 3 tbsp Unsalted Irish Butter, softened
Icing Ingredients
- 2 oz Philadelphia Cream Cheese
- ¾ cup Confectioners’ Sugar
- Pinch of Ground Cinnamon
- ¼ tsp Salt
- ¼ tsp Vanilla Extract
- 2 tbsp Unsalted Irish Butter, melted
- 1 tbsp Whole Milk
Combine the lukewarm milk and the yeast. Set aside. Using stand mixer with a dough hook, combine butter, salt and Truvia. Add the egg and vanilla. Add milk and yeast mixture to mixer. Add the star anise to the flour and mix. Gradually add flour to wet ingredients. Do not overmix – mix just until combined.
Take dough from mixer and knead by hand for 5 minutes. Place dough in a greased bowl and cover with a tea towel. Allow to rise for at least 2 hours. The dough should double in size.
Preheat oven to 350°F and grease two round cake pans with a nonstick spray). Combine the dry filling ingredients. Roll out the dough into a rectangular shape. Do not roll too thin. Spread butter on top of the dough with your hands.
Sprinkle cinnamon mixture over the buttered dough. Along the long edge, tightly roll dough.
Bun Only Nutrition
Icing Only Nutrition
Using a sharp or serrated knife, cut rolled dough into 1 ½ inch pieces. There should be about 12 to 14 pieces.
Place 6 to 7 buns (swirl side down) into prepared pans, about ½ inch apart. Cover the pans with a tea towel and allow buns to rise for 15-30 minutes. Remove the towel and bake for about 20-25 minutes until buns are golden brown.
While the buns are baking, mix together the cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Pour the butter and vanilla extract in and mix. Add milk and mix until smooth.
Drizzle buns with icing and serve.
Bun Only Nutrition
Icing Only Nutrition
Valentine’s day... is coming!
Love is in the air folks! You know what I love (besides my husband)? These sweet buns! These are one of my favorite treats to make for him and they are usually gone pretty quickly. I feel like making cinnamon buns is almost like an art form and you can definitely make them your own. Kneading the dough and shaping out each bun out by hand… and the finished product is so fluffy and delicious.
Do these take a bit of time to make? Yes, yes they do. Are they completely worth it? Yes. Like anything worth having, it takes time and work but is amazing in the end. Relationships are a lot like that. They take time and effort. A lot. I can tell you from personal experience that it can be a learning curve and you can get hurt over and over again. But chin up, my friend. It will always get better if you keep trying.
If I were to give some words of wisdom, I would say to be selfless in your love and love your spouse 100%. I’m not saying to wait on them hand and foot and put your hopes and dreams aside. You know what? I’m not always the best with words when it comes to relationship advice and I don’t think that I can’t say it as well as the Bible.
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“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails...”
1 Corinthians 13:4-8
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“The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body but yields it to her husband. In the same way, the husband does not have authority over his own body but yields it to his wife. Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.”
1 Corinthians 7:3-5
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Two are better than one,
because they have a good return for their labor:
If either of them falls down,
one can help the other up.
But pity anyone who falls
and has no one to help them up.
Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm.
But how can one keep warm alone?
Though one may be overpowered,
two can defend themselves.
A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
Ecclesiastes 4:9-12
You know, there is a lot of wisdom about relationships, more than I’m going to quote in this post. I can’t recommend reading it enough. So maybe take a page out of Song of Songs this Valentine’s Day…
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My beloved spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, come with me.
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come,
the cooing of doves
is heard in our land.
The fig tree forms its early fruit;
the blossoming vines spread their fragrance.
Arise, come, my darling;
my beautiful one, come with me.”
Song of Songs 2:10-13