Homemade Cinnamon Rolls
- Cinni-Minnis
I have been busy working on my second edition of the Perfect 10 Cookbooks. It’s going to be very special. I have about 400 recipes that have been preliminarily selected. Now I’m well underway in the cooking, testing, tasting (and eating) part. I give away a lot of my prepared recipes because, I’m mean really, who could eat all this food? The judges love being called over for testing because they know they’ll be taking most of it home with them.
I just completed the Appetizer & Beverage section. Been working on that for about three months now. These recipes were the easiest and the most fun, especially the Beverages!
Today, baking! Yeah! I love to bake. There’s just something so comforting about the aroma of yeast breads, cinnamon rolls, pies or cakes baking away. And it’s Saturday. Nothing better than Cinnamon Rolls for a leisurely weekend morning.
I have a very good recipe for Giant Cinnamon Rolls posted on my Facebook page. It’s easy and uses a boxed roll mix for the base, plus the rolls rise overnight in the refrigerator. You wake up, pop them in the oven and in 30 minutes you have fresh Cinnamon Rolls. (Find it on FB at Perfect 10 Cookbooks.)
For my book, I’ll be selecting a recipe that is totally from scratch. So let’s see. Which one will it be? I have five that I’m considering. One sounds really good – it has vanilla pudding in it. The second one sounds good, too, but required kneading for 20 minutes! Well, I do have a KitchenAide with a kneading hook. Is that cheating?
Choosing the one with vanilla pudding and the one with two packets of yeast and extra sugar. Battle of the Cinnamon Rolls begins.
Making the one with vanilla pudding first…
Proofed the yeast, one packet; love the smell of yeast. All ingredients in, including the one egg. ALWAYS, ALWAYS break your eggs into a separate bowl, then add them to the recipe. This prevents shells from making your final product a little crunchy, plus, in the event of a bad egg, you won’t spoil your entire mixture.
In all the years I’ve been cooking, that has happened to me ONCE! I was making a very important recipe on a tight schedule and I started taking a few short cuts in prep. I started to crack the egg directly into the batter and I remembered the rotten egg rule, so I reluctantly pulled a small ramekin down from the shelf and cracked the egg directly into it. I was shocked as a black egg emerged from a pristine looking shell. Not so much smelly, just very obviously a BAD EGG! It has never happened to me since, but I faithfully crack all my eggs into a small bowl first, then add them to the recipe.
This first recipe is so thin! Surely it needs more flour. But, I’ll stick to the recipe for now.
…”Roll out on floured surface and knead for 10 minutes…” This dough is so sticky it’s going to be difficult to get it out of the bowl, let alone knead it! I’m going to spray my hands with PAM first. That helps, but as I try to pull this dough together, I have to add more flour, just a little at a time, to make it workable. Too much flour will make the final product though.
After refrigerating the dough for several hours, the fun part starts. Rolling it out and filling with a brown sugar, cinnamon mixture. I go a little heavy on the sugar part. I like sweet rolls.
Tightly roll up and slice. I wish you could see these beauties. Brown sugar spirals and very delicate dough. I think these babies are going to be great. After a second rising, they go into the oven.
Final product, incredibly light, golden brown and frosted with a cream cheese icing. Pure heaven.
Made the other recipe and just as I thought, the dough was heavy and tough. Too much kneading. I will make the first recipe one more time with the changes and call the tasters. I think it’s going to get a Perfect 10 score.
Made two more batches of the first recipe. Rolled one batch into giant rolls and the other into miniature rolls, about 2-inches in diameter. This is a “David and Goliath” battle of the Cinnamon Rolls. Which one will the testers like?
After much deliberation, and a lot of tasting, the Perfect 10 Cinnamon Roll winner is….the “Cinni-Minis.”
Soft, delicate, full of flavor and so much fun to eat. Just pop them into your mouth and sip your favorite blend of coffee or tea. Kid-sized, too. And anyway, isn’t the best part of the Cinnamon Roll the center? These are just like having dozens of soft center pieces to east with no fuss of plates and forks.
Look for the recipe for “Cinni-Minis” in the second edition of Perfect 10 Cookbooks!
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