Baking Cinnamon Rolls with Buddy

With the semester winding down, I am finding less time to bake, but more need to bake from being so stressed out. As an equine science student at my University, we have barn finals the week before regular class finals. So when normal college students are enjoying their last week of classes or actually having time to work on major projects that are usually due the last week of classes, I don’t. Our barn finals are held as a 5 day long horse show where you show off what you have gotten done with your horse over the course of the semester. It is so stressful, I can’t even explain.

So Sunday morning I decided to try making cinnamon rolls-from scratch. The recipe really isn’t very difficult or challenging, but it does take a lot of time just because there is yeast in the dough and you need to let it rise.

I previously tried to make this recipe and failed because I walked away from my hand mixer and it proceeded to topple my bowl of half-made, really sticky dough on the floor. Needless to say, I was very angry and it has taken me a couple months to re-attempt this recipe.

I used the recipe from my Betty Crocker cook book. The recipe says that it makes 15 rolls, so I halved the recipe and it still made 13 rolls, they weren’t very big-about the size of the ones you get from the tube.

Here is the pre-halved recipe:

Dough:

1 ¾-2 Cups Flour

2 ½ Tablespoons + ½ teaspoon sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1 package Yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)

½ cup warm milk

2 Tablespoons butter, softened

½ egg

In a large bowl, mix half of the flour (1 cup), sugar, the salt and the yeast. Add the warm milk (I just put the milk in the microwave for about a minute), the ½ egg and the butter. Beat this mix with an electric mixer for about a minute on low; make sure you keep scraping the bowl as you go to get everything in the mixture. Add the rest of the flour, and beat again.

Place the dough on a lightly floured surface and knead the dough for about 5 minutes (warning-the dough is very sticky at first). The dough should be “smooth and springy”. Grease another large bowl with shortening and put the dough in this bowl and turn the dough until the whole thing is greased. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise for about an hour and a half. The dough should roughly double in size. When the dough has risen, you should be able to leave an impression in the dough when it has risen.

Mix the filling in a small bowl/dish and set aside:

2 Tablespoons brown sugar

½ teaspoon ground cinnamon

On a lightly floured surface, take the dough and flatten it with your hands or a rolling pin. The original recipe calls for a 10x15 inch rectangle and that is about what mine ended up being, so you might want to roll the dough somewhere between ¼ and ½ inch thick. Spread butter on the dough and sprinkle the filling evenly across the rolled out dough. Beginning on the long side, roll the dough tightly and then pinch the dough to seal the roll. Using either a serrated knife or dental floss, cut the roll into about 1-inch rolls. I used a serrate knife and it worked well. Grease a pan and place the rolls slightly spread out in the pan. Now cover the baking dish loosely with plastic wrap and allow the dough to rise another 30 minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and then bake the rolls for 30-35 minutes. I only baked mine for about 25 minutes and they were still brown and fully cooked.

While these were baking I made the glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

5-6 teaspoons milk

I doubled the glaze so that it would cover all of the rolls, above is the pre-doubled recipe.

After the rolls are done, remove them from the baking dish to a plate and allow the rolls to cool for a few minutes, glaze them with the icing you have made, and enjoy!

These were pretty good cinnamon rolls, but not the best I have ever had, and they were very time consuming, so it was a very good learning opportunity.

Enjoy!

~Jenn