Welcome to week 15 of the Alpha Bakers bake-a-long, an online project where a group of food bloggers bake our way through The Baking Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. Most of the recipes made during this project will not be shared, but I will post my commentary followed by a full photo tutorial.

This week's selection - Caramel Buns. A brioche dough filled with cinnamon sugar and rum soaked raisins, brushed with a rum glaze, and drizzled with a scrumptious sticky caramel sauce. The recipe calls for pecans as well, but I omitted them because they were made for a family with nut allergies.

Special ingredients and/or equipment needed - two 9-inch round cake pans, stand mixer or bread machine, two 16-ounce glass canning jars or 3-inch diameter ramekins, pastry brush.

Optional ingredients and/or equipment suggested - digital scale, pastry cloth.

How do they taste - One of my daughters loved them, but me and my other daughter thought they were "ok". Honestly, I really wasn't thrilled with the flavor of the brioche part of the caramel buns - I found it flavorless. But I really liked the rum soaked raisins and sticky caramel sauce so that helped.

How do they look - Beautiful served in ring form, but individually they are shaped like trapezoids. Not a big deal for some perhaps, but I've always preferred the symmetry of a round swirled bun.

Level of difficulty - Intermediate.

Were the directions clear - Not entirely. There are 8 pages of written directions for these buns. EIGHT! Do yourself a favor and read them over a few times before you make this recipe.

There is a paragraph about serving these buns for brunch that seemed to stump a lot of the Alpha Bakers. I wasn't stumped by it, but I felt like the paragraph was out of place - seems to me like it would have been better as a sidebar note.

And let me say this, I'm really starting to get annoyed with the fact that the recipes in this book do not include a timeline. I fully expected to start this recipe in the afternoon and bake it off the next morning, but the dough wasn't ready to bake until later that evening. I guess I could have figured that out if I had read the directions more carefully, but honestly, with EIGHT pages of directions, I tend to focus my concentration on the various procedures and techniques rather than the rest and chill times.

What would I do differently next time - Bake the buns individually in muffin tins or something similar that would result in a round shape. Also, rather than use a beaten egg to adhere the brown sugar/raisin filling, I think melted butter would taste much, much better.

Next up - Sour Cherry Pie. Sour cherries are hard to find, especially this time of year so I make no promises.

Okay, here's my photo tutorial.