Pumpkin pie is my favorite seasonal dessert, but cinnamon buns are delicious any time of the year. Speaking of time, making them requires a lot of it! Even though these buns were definitely worth the wait, I suggest baking them before the craving hits...otherwise, waiting for the dough to rise will seem like it takes forever! But if you just so happen to have a partially used can of pumpkin puree hanging out in your fridge, and you can't decide between pumpkin pie or cinnamon buns, then this recipe has your name on it.
3 TBSPs of butter in the whole batch, it's a bit lighter than the typical cinnamon bun recipe, but it also has more spices (the kind you'd taste in a pumpkin pie, hence the name :). I was inspired by The Joy of Baking's Cinnamon Rolls (Buns). The photo was enticing, and I loved how fluffy the cinnamon buns looked, so I studied the ingredients, halved the ones I used, and came up with these Mini Pumpkin Pie Cinnamon Buns. Jose says they're the best cinnamon buns he's ever had. I think they're tasty, but there are so many delicious cinnamon bun recipes out there that are pretty tough to compete with!
The rolled up dough is slightly more difficult to slice up than that of traditional cinnamon buns (because the pumpkin filling oozes out when the raw dough is cut up into individual pieces) but this can be fixed by freezing (well, not entirely :) the dough for a few minutes before the slicing and baking begins. The blast of cold air firms up the dough and pumpkin just enough, and, thankfully, the pumpkin itself takes on the perfect texture during the baking process (it really does taste and look like pumpkin pie filling after the buns bake :).
Enough with the descriptions! Eventually, you're just gonna have to bake and taste them yourself :)!
Further reading: BBC Good Food baking guidance.