Maple Cinnamon Buns

Learn how to make the best maple cinnamon buns with this easy recipe. These delicious maple buns start with a brioche dough that is enriched with milk, sugar, eggs, and butter, creating a tender, rich cinnamon roll that is slathered in a thick layer of maple butter before serving.

Maple cinnamon buns are also called maple brioche buns in Quebec or "roulés à l'érable" in French. The trick to the best cinnamon buns is starting with a homemade brioche dough recipe, enriched with milk, eggs, sugar, and lots of butter. These maple buns get the most maple flavour from the pure maple butter topping.

Jump to:

• What You Need
• Substitutions and Variations
• How to Make Maple Brioche Buns
• Maple Cinnamon Bun Baking FAQs
• Other Maple-Flavoured Baking Recipes
• 📖 Recipe

What You Need

• flour—I used regular bleached all-purpose flour for the brioche dough
• butter—I developed this recipe with unsalted butter. If using salted butter, you may want to adjust the amount of salt you add to the dough
• milk—I used whole milk (3.25 % fat), but 2 % milk also works great here
• eggs—I bake with large eggs. Using eggs that are larger or smaller may affect the consistency of the dough and you may have to adjust the liquids/flour quantities
• yeast—I prefer to use instant yeast. If you are using active yeast, you will have to heat the milk to a higher temperature to proof the yeast and the rise times will be longer and slower
• sugar—for this recipe, I used maple sugar for both the brioche dough and cinnamon bun filling. See the substitutions section for other options
• maple butter, either use homemade maple butter or you can buy it. Remember maple butter is 100 % pure maple syrup and not a compound butter made from butter and maple syrup! These are not interchangeable!
• maple flakes are crunchy, maple-flavoured flaky sprinkles. They are made from pure maple syrup and available at markets and grocery stores all over Quebec. You can also buy them on Amazon.
• cinnamon—regular ground cinnamon is fine. No need for anything fancy
• salt—I bake with Diamond Crystal fine kosher salt. If you are using regular table salt, you should add half the amount to avoid the buns being too salty.

Please see the recipe card for the exact ingredients and quantities.

Substitutions and Variations

• sugar—the maple sugar in the dough can easily be replaced with regular granulated sugar, while the maple sugar in the filling can be replaced with light or dark brown sugar
• maple syrup—you can turn these into maple sticky buns by pouring up to ¾ cup (180 mL) of hot maple syrup over the hot buns as soon as they come out of the oven.

How to Make Maple Brioche Buns

Making this recipe from start to finish will take 3 to 4 hours. Plan accordingly! Here's how to make maple buns:

Step 1—In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour and salt. Set aside. Then start the dough by combining the warm milk, maple sugar, yeast, and eggs in the bowl of a stand mixer with a paddle attachment (image 1). Once well mixed, add the whisked dry ingredients (image 2). Stir everything together until a shaggy dough forms (image 3), then switch to the hook attachment and knead the dough until smooth and elastic (image 4).

Step 2—Start adding the softened butter, a few pieces at a time (image 5). The smooth dough will become sticky as the fat of the butter interferes with the gluten (image 6). Once all the butter has been added, continue kneading the dough until it is soft, supple, smooth and elastic (image 7).

Step 3—Transfer the dough to a clear container (image 8) and mark the container to note where the top of the dough hits. Let the dough rise until doubled (image 9) in a warm, dry place.

Step 4—Combine the filling ingredients in a small bowl (image 10). The mixture will be crumbly (image 11). Once the dough has risen, roll it out on a floured surface to a 12x16-inch (30.5x40.6-cm) rectangle (image 12) and crumble/smear the filling over top from edge-to-edge (image 13).

Step 5—Roll the dough into a 12-inch (30.5 cm) log (image 14) and cut it into twelve equal pieces (image 15).

Tip: You can use unflavored dental floss to cut the buns and preserve their round shape, but I generally use a metal bench scraper. Just don't smush the dough too hard with your hands and be swift about it to avoid distorting the shape too much. You can always gently reshape the buns between your palms.

Step 6—Transfer the twelve buns to your 9x13-in pan (23x31-cm) (image 16). Cover and let the buns proof slowly while you preheat the oven. When the buns are proofed (image 17), bake them until golden brown and baked through (image 18).

Step 7—After cooling slightly, with the back of a spoon, smear a spoonful of room-temperature maple butter over each bun (image 19) and sprinkle with a few maple flakes (image 20).

Maple Cinnamon Bun Baking FAQs

Other Maple-Flavoured Baking Recipes

If you love maple as much as I do, here are a few more maple-flavoured baking recipes to try:

If you tried this recipe for the best maple cinnamon buns (or any other recipe on my website), please leave a ⭐ star rating and let me know how it went in the comments below. I love hearing from you!

📖 Recipe

Make the dough and then let it rise, slowly on the counter for 3 hours. Punch it down and put it in the fridge before bed. Then in the morning, you just have to shape the dough into simple brioche buns, or for a different look, you can roll out the dough with a rolling pin, and cut out circles to form these brioche flowers (see step-by-step photos). Make sure you use pure maple sugar (like this one on Amazon and Amazon Canada).

For these mini maple brioche buns, I used maple sugar, the secret ingredient used in this maple apple pie. Maple sugar is crystallized maple syrup so baking with maple sugar allows you to add tons of maple flavour without the water in maple syrup. You can buy maple sugar on Amazon and use it in many other maple recipes or spread it thinly inside rolled crêpes.