I searched around the internet for a good recipe, and came across this one from the Guardian website. It seemed like a good option, requiring less proving that most recipes, and using ingredients that I nearly all had in at home.
INGREDIENTS:
For the buns:
300ml whole milk (I only had semi-skimmed, and it worked fine)
1tsp ground cardamon seeds (about 25 pods)
50g butter
424g plain flour
7g fast action yeast
60g caster sugar
1/4 tsp fine salt
1 egg, beaten lightly
oil, to grease
For the filling:
75g softened butter
50g dark brown sugar (again, I only had light brown, it was fine, a little less treacly)
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp salt
For the icing:
125g icing sugar
1.5 tbsp milk
(note: I did not have any cream cheese, or I would've made cream cheese icing!)
1. Put the milk and ground cardamom seeds in a small sauce-pan and bring to just below the boil. Take off the heat, stir in the butter, and then leave to infuse.
2. Mix together all the dry ingredients in a large bowl. When the milk is no longer hot, and is just warm, make a well in the dry ingredients and the egg. Stir the egg in, then pour in the milk through a strainer. Stir until it comes together to make a soft dough that pulls away from the edge of the bowl.
3. Oil your surface well, and your hands, and knead for five minutes. It is a very soft and wet dough, I found, but resist adding more flour. I didn't have a dough scraper, but I recommend using one for this!
4. Wipe out the bowl and oil it lightly, then return the dough to the bowl. Cover, and leave somewhere warm for 30 minutes. (They suggest a cold oven, with a bowl of hot water, but we left hours at the back of the stove-top whilst the oven was on, and that worked well.)
5. Whilst the dough is proving, make the filling by beating all the ingredients together until soft and easily spreadable. (Resist from eating, this mixture tastes so good.)
6. Also whilst waiting, grease a cake tin.
7. Roll out the dough on a lightly floured surface to a rectangle roughly 35 x 25cm. Spread the filling mixture evenly across the dough, then roll dough into a sausage shape, starting from the long edge (like you would a swiss roll). Cut into eight even slices.
8. Arrange the slices in a tin, evenly spaced, and leave to prove again for 30 minutes.
9. Meanwhile, heat the oven to 200C/400F/Gas 6. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden brown.
So there we go! They're best eaten fresh, obviously, and don't keep amazingly well, and would be much improved with some cream cheese icing and not the sugar icing that I made - but they hit the spot and weren't that hard, despite the multiple proves, etc. Next on my challenge list are croissants and doughnuts...
