Let’s paint a picture. You pick up a cinnamon bun and are ready to sink your teeth into its soft, gooey goodness when you’re met with a dry, crunchy exterior and chalky icing—pure disappointment. Although everyone has different tastes, I think we can all agree on our expectations when ordering a cinnamon bun.
There’s no reason you can’t find fluffy, sticky and warm cinnamon buns that are vegan. And we could be biased, but we think vegan cinnamon buns are even better. But there are a few things you should look out for when choosing your vegan cinnamon buns to ensure they are as close to perfection as possible.
Traditional cinnamon bun recipes contain animal products like butter, milk and eggs, but these ingredients are unnecessary to make the perfect cinnamon bun. Swapping animal-based ingredients for plant-based milk and vegan butter or oil will do the trick just as well, still creating the same consistency and fluffiness in the dough.
Here are the main factors that make the perfect vegan cinnamon bun:
Regardless of your reason for going vegan, choosing organic food options is always preferred. Organic flour is grown without using toxic pesticides or fertilizers and isn’t chemically ripened, so you can ensure it’s safe to consume. On top of that, since organic grain takes longer to ripen in the ground, it absorbs more valuable nutrients. The other ingredients in vegan cinnamon buns should also be organic, including any oils, sweeteners or spices. For ingredients to be certified organic farmers must comply with certain practices that include a focus on wildlife and environment conservation. Now, that’s a cause worth supporting!
Everything is better fresh out of the oven (just don’t get too excited and burn yourself!) It’s pretty much a given that the fresher the cinnamon buns are, the better they will taste. If you’re on the hunt for the perfect vegan cinnamon bun, you should first ask the bakery when they baked the cinnamon buns. Ideally, they will be honest with you and tell you when they came out of the oven or when they plan to make a batch. Cinnamon buns will stay relatively fresh for about two to three days at room temperature, but anything beyond that is a no-go. If the buns have been in the fridge, they will almost instantly begin to lose their moisture and softness.
The amount of cholesterol in a standard cinnamon bun recipe is enough to make any health-conscious consumer tremble in their boots. What’s the main culprit? Butter. One cup of butter has 488 milligrams of cholesterol, which can have a negative impact on heart health, since our bodies already make all the cholesterol that we need. Instead, choose vegan cinnamon buns that use healthy sources of fat like coconut oil or vegan butter made from olive oil. While these ingredients will still contain saturated fats, they contain no cholesterol. Saturated fats in moderation are needed by the body and help keep cinnamon buns soft and gooey. Just resist the urge to eat five cinnamon buns in one sitting, and you’ll be all good!
Too much sugar, whether refined or not, isn’t great for your body. But if you consume sugars consciously, then they don’t need to impact your health negatively. The World Health Organization recommends keeping sugar intake below 10% of total daily caloric intake. So, that means you can still have cinnamon buns! But, the perfect vegan cinnamon bun avoids overly processed and refined sugars. Instead, they use more natural options like organic cane sugar and maple syrup to give them their sweetness. Since organic cane sugar is much less processed, it still retains nutrients when compared with refined white sugars.
Wild Tusker’s Organic Ceylon Cinnamon has a delicate multilayer texture, exquisite fragrance and a warm sweet taste. It is what we use in our cinnamon buns and other vegan baked goods here at BReD.
Wild Tusker Organic Ceylon Cinnamon is different because Ceylon cinnamon is a different species from 99% of the cheap cinnamon on the market (Cassia)! Plus, a portion of each sale of “Wild Tusker” brand products goes towards the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage in order to lend a hand in helping to save this endangered species.Ceylon Cinnamon is also called true Cinnamon or sweet Cinnamon and especially suited for baking because of it’s sweet taste.
Being vegan is about more than avoiding animal products; it’s a way of life and a moral position. When purchasing imported products, we contribute to emissions caused by the transport of ingredients. Not only is this bad for the environment, but it also takes money out of the local economy. It’s not realistic to source 100% of the ingredients from your local area but aim to support those who use as many as possible. Our cinnamon buns are glazed using the most delectable pure Canadian maple syrup from Pefferlaw Creek farms, and we even mill our own flour using Canadian wholegrain.
We can’t fault a classic cinnamon bun, especially when done right, but variety is the spice of life! It’s often said that “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it,” but we love a little risk. Considering how many flavours of donuts there are available, it seems only fair that vegan cinnamon buns get some of that attention too. The perfect vegan cinnamon bun is the one that pushes the boundary. Would you try a chocolate orange cinnamon bun? What about organic Pemberton apple or organic Pemberton plum? We’re always coming up with unique combinations for you to try out.
This brings us to what is arguably the most important part of any vegan cinnamon bun: the glaze. When done wrong, the glaze can completely ruin the whole essence of the cinnamon bun. A chalky, icing sugar glaze instantly dries out the buns and overpowers the cinnamon flavour. The perfect glaze is gooey and sticky while not being too sweet. A maple syrup reduction is an amazing compliment to the cinnamon, and the consistency enables it to be soaked up by the cinnamon bun to keep it moist.
If you’re constantly disappointed by the vegan cinnamon buns you try, we can tell you that the perfect one does exist! But maybe you just haven’t had the chance to experience it yet. A cinnamon bun doesn’t need to be loaded with butter, eggs and cream to taste delicious. By using this blueprint, your next vegan cinnamon bun might just be the best you’ve ever tasted!
