The All Purpose Dessert to Impress

Love, love, love enriched dough desserts. They do take a while with the proofing and the rising, but the ingredients here are ones I always seem to have on hand. The filling options are kinda limitless. I've done ginger/cinnamon, chocolate chip, jams of several varieties, and more. But, I always seem to come back to cinnamon and sugar (photo above).

The courronne twist technique becomes second nature once you've done it a few times. I wouldn't do it if it weren't easy, right?

Let's get started.

Total Time: 3 hours 15 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 package or 2.25 tsp YEAST (instant/quick/faster-than-fast, y'know)​
• 180g (or 3/4 cup) MILK (whatever kind you have in the fridge)
• 3 TBSP granulated SUGAR
• 60g (or 5 tbsp) BUTTER (salted/unsalted/butter flavor Crisco - it all works)
• 2 large EGGS
• 430g (or 3 and 1/2 cups) FLOUR (AP of course, we're all lazy here)
• 1 tsp SALT
• FILLING (see below) but the standby is 50g of additional melted butter and 50g of sugar/cinnamon mixture. If using jam, just enough for a thin coating on the rolled out dough (step 5 below).

Vanilla Icing

• 120g (1 cup) Confectioner's Sugar
• 45g (or 3 Tablespoons) MILK (cream, half & half, 2%, whatever you have around)
• 1/4 tsp VANILLA EXTRACT

1 - Skip this step if you KNOW you have good yeast. If you aren't sure of the age of your yeast, warm your milk in the microwave a bit (not hot, just body temp) and scatter the yeast over the top. In five minutes it should start bubbling up. If not, stir in a teaspoon of the sugar and give it five more. Still nothing? Head to the store. Sorry. [Sourdough Bakers - Visit the Tips & Tricks Blog from the homepage for Starter changes to this or any recipe]

2 - In a stand mixer with the dough hook, mix the YEAST, MILK, SUGAR, BUTTER, EGG, FLOUR, and SALT. Beat on low speed for 4-5 minutes. Dough should be soft and glossy (PRETTY!). Transfer it to a lightly floured work surface. Knead for 1 minute. If the dough is too sticky to handle, add a little flour (less than a quarter cup is best). Form into a ball and return to the mixing bowl to rise, or something else if your mixing bowl is too big for the oven like mine. Cover with plastic.

3 - Place the dough in covered bowl in your oven with the light on. It should rise (double) in about 90 min in that environment. If it's hot in your kitchen, you might not need to the oven.

4 - Grease a 9-inch pan (springforms are cool, but I do mine in a cake pan). Turn the risen dough out onto a lightly floured work surface, walk your fingers over the surface and start to form a rectangle.

5 - Roll out to 41cm (16inches) by 30cm (12inches). Melt and cool the BUTTER for the FILLING and spread all over, leaving the last couple centimeters at the top of the long edge naked. Evenly spread the CINNAMON SUGAR mixture over the butter. Roll the prepped dough so you have a 41cm (16inch) log.

6 - Split your dough log (snake) down the middle length-wise. (That's right - you are splitting it down the entire length of the 41cm so you have two long, side-by-side, half logs.) With the filling sides face up, lay the two logs over each other making a simple braid. I usually get them to cross over two to three times. Take one end and coil. You can tuck under the far end or leave it as is. I like to do a small tuck. Gently transfer the whole thing to your prepared pan.

7 - Cover with plastic and put it back in your warm spot for 45 minutes to an hour.

8 - Preheat the oven to 350F. The second proof should leave your twist taking up all of the 9 inch pan.

9 - Bake 35 - 40 min or until the internal temp reaches 200F. Should be golden brown on top with the exposed filling getting even darker.

10 - Rest for 5 min and remove from pan. Or don't remove from pan. Up to you.

11 - Whisk the Icing ingredients together, and drizzle over the top once mostly to totally cooled.

12 - EAT!