Recipe: maple and cinnamon milk bread

Fluffy little clouds of milk bread, each stuffed with a maple, cinnamon and brown sugar butter, baked until golden then bathed in a sea of maple butter glaze.

I’m not entirely sure where the idea for this came from, but I suspect it was inspired by all of the monkey bread recipes I’ve been looking at, combined with my seemingly eternal craving for cinnamon buns. I wanted to create a form more akin to monkey bread, but with soft milk bread because I adore baking and eating it. It is a somewhat time consuming bake to produce, but a fun one. The milk bread is divided into 10 pieces, each piece is rolled out slightly and divided into 4, a little bit of filling is dotted onto each piece and is then encased in the dough by wrapping it up like a won ton. I did two versions–smaller, individual versions made using 8cm oven-safe rings, then a larger 8” version using a loose-bottom cake tin. I adore the way that the smaller ones came out–adorable little parcels, perfect for a single serving, however since there was more surface area on show, the dough did dry it a touch and created a slightly crunchy exterior. This was delicious, but I suspected they needed slightly less time to bake which I have factored in to the recipe below. I think that the larger form produces a softer, more buttery eat, and is of course easier to share, but I will provide instructions for both.

a slice from the larger 8” cake tin bake

cross section of the individual bake, made using a 8cm cake ring