Morning Bun

Made with buttery croissant dough and veined with swirls of sugar and cinnamon, the morning bun first got popular in the San Francisco Bay area in the mid 20-aughts. Some reports say it originated in Wisconsin and traveled west; by 2010 it had become so common that it was part of the regular lineup on Starbuck’s pastry shelf. It is made in a muffin tin, giving it a dual personality, the stump compressed and rich like a farmland sweet roll with perhaps a thin web of caramel crispness like a chewy trivet all around the bottom, its top as light and flaky as a croissant.