the salty scone

I love sticky buns. Sticky, sticky buns. Yeaaaaa.

I had never made pastries from scratch before. In my experience, it’s always been easier just to buy the tube of dough at the store, and do it that way. However, given my new interest in cooking, and my incredible lack of experience with baking, I ignored the Pilsbury approach, and decided to do it on my own - an obvious step in the right direction. Practice makes perfect, yeah?

It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be.  The hardest part was figuring out how to properly knead the dough (thank you, YouTube.com), other than that, it’s basically just throwing everything together in a couple of bowls, sifting, mixing, spreading, rolling, and baking. Not too bad, really. I will say that I was kind of disappointed by how much sugar and fat goes into a batch of these suckers though. I mean, I know that’s what makes food taste good, but dang, that’s a lot of crap. Oh well, that’s why we exercise, right? Yeah…

Anyway, I don’t think I’ll be going back to the instant-dough approach anytime soon. Perhaps I was blinded by the satisfaction of a job well done (or at least done relatively well - some were a bit messy…), or maybe I really am a culinary genius - I don’t know. What I do know, is that when all was said and done, I don’t think I have ever enjoyed a pastry as much as I did these; nor have I ever felt so good while eating something so bad for me (damn you sugar! damn you butter!). They were just so good!

I am quickly learning that one can find great amounts of joy and pride in food that’s homemade. It’s the elbow grease factor, I think. With each kneading stretch, each turn of the spoon, the food becomes part of us, and we become part of the food - a spiritual transfer almost. Sure that sounds ridiculous, but surely you can’t deny that there’s something about a homemade meal (or tasty pastry) that you just can’t get from a ready-to-nuke boxed meal.

So, after eating a couple, and sharing a few more with some friends, I had my roommate take the remaining buns to work with him, mainly as an attempt to spread my love of food to the masses, but also because, frankly, I don’t need to have 13 sticky buns just lying around, waiting to be eaten. Plus, I figure the more of my food they eat, and the more they enjoy eating it, maybe someday they will hire me as their personal chef. Makes sense, right?