‘I tried making Liz Truss’ recipe for cinnamon rolls and they were somehow boring and too sugary'
When I found out that our new Prime Minister loves cooking, I was sceptical. I’ve never heard of her being good at anything, let alone the culinary arts.
It turns out she’s actually such a foodie she used to share all her meals online. Unfortunately for her, the pictures did nothing to convince me of her talent.
As an avid baker myself, I knew I needed to try her cinnamon rolls when I chanced upon her Stylist recipe. Not only do I love creating sweet treats, but I also hail from Norway, the land of cinnamon rolls.
Back when she was secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs and MP for South West Norfolk, she told Stylist: “Cinnamon buns are my favourite thing to bake. This is something I’d usually make at the weekend as a breakfast dish. I bake mostly at the weekend and sometimes in the evenings – I find it therapeutic after a long day.
“You can make the buns the day before and then heat them up the next morning for a really nice breakfast. I keep saying I’ll bring them to the office but they always get eaten!” Her sheer enthusiasm for the baked goods, rivalled only by her passion for British cheese, convinced me to give them a go.
Ingredients at the ready
For the recipe, I need water, yeast, granulated sugar, bread flour, salt, milk, butter, dark brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves, and apricot jam. Our PM promised the recipe would take two hours – and politicians never lie, right?
I’ve baked many a cinnamon bun in my life, so I’m well versed in the process. First up, I combined the dry ingredients for the dough. Then I poured the yeast into its comfy little water bath and let it stew for a while.
Surprisingly, Liz Truss fancies herself quite the foodie
I’m not the biggest fan of yeast baking because keeping something so fickle alive scares me. But I will admit there’s something incredibly satisfying about seeing the bubbles form as the yeast comes to life in the right environment.
With the mixture poured in, it was time to knead. Going at it until the dough’s ready wasn’t good enough for Liz. Instead, the recipe required precisely five minutes no matter how sore my wrists became.
I almost broke my wrists for this
Timer finally up, the dough mercifully needed to rest for ten minutes, during which time I could wipe the sweat off my brow. Surely Liz Truss has someone to do this for her?
Dough tripled in volume, I gently stretched to the required size down to the centimetre. I even used a measuring band and everything.
Slathering the rectangle in butter, I was a little taken aback by the sparseness of it. Surely the PM knows best though; she is in charge of running the country.
A much more generous sprinkling of spiced sugar later, I was ready to put the buns into my preheated oven. Alas, they needed a further 40 minutes of resting time.
The rolls needed to rest for a further 40 minutes
That’s roughly how long it took me to scrape the leftover dough from my hands anyway, so no bother. Forty minutes later and an extra 20 for baking, it was time – I had completed Liz Truss’ cinnamon bun recipe.
She also called for a glaze of apricot jam and water to be slathered across the top, but I was dubious. Cinnamon rolls are already half sugar, surely they don’t need even more sweetness.
Rife with suspicion, I dutifully covered just one of the buns and upon my first bite I knew I’d made a mistake. All I could taste was sugar.
Maybe my jam was not of high enough quality, but until Liz sorts out the cost of living crisis I can only afford Asda’s own brand. Whatever Waitrose No 1 the PM uses is probably tastier, but such luxuries aren’t for us commoners.
The buns came out pretty as a picture
Setting aside my now ruined bun, I tucked into a plain one, expecting to be starstruck by its perfection. Instead, I was disappointed.
In Norway, we lace the dough itself with cardamom to give it an extra spiced kick. Liz’s plain dough was nothing but boring and might as well have been used as a pizza base.
The filling was too strong on the sugar and much to stingy on the spices, making for a thoroughly mediocre bite. After two hours of work, I was expecting much better than the doughy disappointment I got. Hopefully she does better as Prime Minister than as a “baking aficionado”.