Cinnamon Buns

I've made cinnamon buns twice this year.  The first time was a month ago when I decided to try a recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  The recipe seemed promising although I had problems with the dough not rising.  Probably because it's arctic cold in our house.  Flavor came out great but texture was simply not as fluffy as hoped.

I held off trying again until this week when Monkey came to town for the holidays.  This time, I used a recipe from my Baking Illustrated book and boy did it deliver.  Both recipes were similar but for the second go, I used a technique Monkey recommended for rising the dough: preheat oven to 200, turn off the oven, and put the dough inside.  Sure enough, super puffy.  Everything about these buns were fabulous, including the icing.  Will definitely make again.

Here are pictures of this week's buns.

And here are pictures of the previous buns which failed to rise to expectations (pun intended har har).