Today, February 21, 2014, is National Sticky Bun Day. Sticky buns are a dessert or breakfast sweet roll that generally consist of rolled pieces of leavened dough which are then compressed together to form a kind of flat loaf corresponding to the size of the baking pan. Before the dough is placed in the pan, it is lined with the "sticky" ingredients like maple syrup, honey as well as nuts. After the buns are baked, they are inverted so that the pan lining then becomes a topping. The way the buns were baked allows them to more or less be pulled off as individual servings. Sticky buns have been consumed since the Middle Ages, at which time cinnamon became more prominent. Sticky buns have a Germanic origin and were originally known as "Schnecken". The Pennsylvania Dutch introduced Schnecken in the United States. Wherever 18th-century German settlers went, sticky buns have remained long after many other cultural traits have disappeared.
