Once in a while it feels good to get your hands into rolling your own dough (over and over) and transforming it into something sweet and tasty.

Making morning buns is a fairly easy process the only challenge is the rolling and the resting periods. It’s a total of 4 hours all together when you combine the time it needs in between of resting and chilling. It’s one of those recipes that’s perfect to make when you have a lot of house work chores to catch up on. In between cleaning the floors, picking the weeds, washing baseboards, and laundry you won’t even realize how much time has passed and you’ll have these buns all wrapped up and ready to go for the morning.

You deserve a nice little treat after a long day of choring. All that hard work in rolling, waiting, and resting all pays off when the aromas of freshly baked pastries start to fill the house. Take a moment to admire your work. It’s all in the details with these buns. Observe the beautifully hand rolled golden brown layers that are now apparent.

These buns would also be great for brunches, make ahead and bring them to the cottage or even serve them for dessert 🙂

Print Recipe

croissant morning buns with dates and orange

morning buns made from buttery croissant dough with a caramel drizzle

Prep Time4 hours hrs

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Total Time4 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Course: Breakfast

Keyword: breakfast, croissant, dates, morning bun, orange, pastry

Servings: 8

Author: Stephanie

Ingredients

• For the croissant dough:
• 1 1/2 warmed whole milk
• 1/4 cup brown sugar packed
• 1 pkg active dry yeast
• 4 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cup unsalted butter
• 1 tsp salt
• Filling:
• 1 cup dates pit removed & chopped
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 1 orange zested
• 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
• 1 tsp cardamon
• Caramel sauce:
• 1 cup white sugar

Instructions

• Warm milk using a microwave safe dish or stove top if you prefer. A large glass measuring cup works best.
• Stir in the brown sugar and active yeast to the milk. Let sit 10 minutes until the milk starts to foam.
• In a large bowl or stand mixer if you have one with dough hook, transfer the milk mixture and slowly add the flour (3 1/2 cups) and salt reserving the remaining flour to kneed the dough. Using a mixer on low speed to form the dough until it comes together. Scrape down the sides if you have excess flour up the sides of the bowl. The dough should be a bit sticky if its too sticky add a bit more flour until it reaches the correct texture.
• Transfer your dough to a lightly floured surface using your hands to kneed the dough. (2 minutes)
• Use your hands to from the dough into a 1 1/2 inch rectangle, wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
• Once your dough has chilled for an hour, roll it out into a floured work surface into a 16″ by 10″ rectangle.
• Spread the butter out onto plastic wrap and cover with a second piece of plastic wrap. This will prevent the butter from sticking to your rolling pin and make it easier to roll it out. Keep in mind when spreading and rolling that the butter will be placed onto your dough. You want to make sure that you roll a thin layer of butter and that it will cover most of the dough leaving about an inch space around the boarder.
• Once you’ve peeled the plastic wrap off the butter and it’s in the centre of your dough, fold the short side of the dough towards the centre and then fold the other side over. They should overlap slightly. Cover in plastic wrap and refrigerate for an hour.
• Repeat step 8 to make 3 more fold in the dough, chilling after each fold. Wrap and chill for at least 8 hours or overnight.
• Roll out the dough into 1/2 inch thick, sprinkle sugar, cinnamon, cardamon, spread dates, zest of an orange onto the dough. You could skip the sugar all together here has the dates are naturally sweet and will cook down. Adjust to your desired taste
• Roll your dough into a log and slice into 1 inch pieces. Transfer onto a baking sheet with parchment paper. Let sit for 30 minutes. The rolls expand quite a bit be sure to leave enough space in between.
• Preheat oven to 375F and bake for 30 minutes until golden brown.
• Optional: make a caramel sauce to drizzle over your morning bun. Simply warm 1 cup of white sugar in a saucepan on low heat. No need to stir, the sugar will naturally slowly start to melt into a caramel. Make sure to cook on low and keep an eye on it to avoid burning. Should take about 15 minutes. Add a bit of heavy cream if you would like a lighter caramel.
• Sprinkle buns with more orange zest and serve!