Cinnamon Rolls: Oh, What a Delicious Mess!

In which I try my hand at making homemade cinnamon rolls, and do indeed make a huge mess, but a delicious one! Includes lessons learned. :-)

My husband had been begging me to try my hand at making homemade cinnamon rolls, and about two weeks ago, we found a recipe online that looked promising. So this past week, I picked up a few things at the grocery store - butter, cream, powdered sugar, cream cheese, and yeast - so that I could make cinnamon rolls for the first time this weekend. The other ingredients - eggs, milk, flour, light brown sugar, and vanilla - are things I typically already have on hand in the kitchen.

It was not by any means a quick process, as the recipe calls for the dough to rise two times, once for an hour, and then again for 45 minutes. On Saturday morning, I started getting the ingredients together around 9 a.m., and I pulled the completed cinnamon rolls out of the oven around 1:15 p.m. Dishes were washed and the kitchen restored to pristine order about 45 minutes later, surrounded by the amazing scent of cinnamon and brown sugar, which fills the air in our house even the next day!

First, I mixed the yeast, warm milk, and sugar, and set it aside for 5 minutes to get things going. Next, I added the flour and eggs and some butter. I own a hand-held mixer, but it wasn't quite enough to take on the task of kneading the mix, and when the mixer started to smell very hot, I abandoned my attempts after about two minutes. (Yes, in retrospect, at this point, I should have pounded and kneaded the dough with my hands to work it out a bit more.) Then I moved the dough to a bowl, covered it with plastic, and put it in a slightly warmed oven for about an hour.

[Insert a one-hour interlude where you may do whatever you wish. Tra-la-la.]

When the dough had risen, I got my working surface ready, and put down parchment paper and flour, put the dough on it and flattened it out, tossed a bit more flour on that, put another piece of parchment paper on top, and went to town with the rolling pin. Alas, the dough seemed sticky and quite wet, and thus stuck to the parchment paper; getting it off required a sharp knife and some effort. (In retrospect, I should have added more flour early on to dry the dough up a bit and make it more fun to work with. I'd also recommend wax paper over parchment paper for the working surface.)

Then came the fun part! Putting cinnamon, brown sugar, and butter chunks on top of the rolled-out dough. This is when my husband wandered in, and offered his observation: "Why does everything you make end up looking like apple pie?" But there were no apples in the mix, though I do stop and wonder how that might have been. Cinnamon-apple-brown-sugar rolls? I may have to think on that.

Then came the less fun part: rolling up the dough with all those goodies inside it. My dough was too thin and sticky, and started to come apart in the middle, and I suddenly began to panic. My cinnamon rolls were messy, and would never become the beautiful cinnamon rolls that you see in pictures. But then I smiled and relaxed, because I realized that no matter what they LOOKED like, they would be absolutely delicious and we would eat them up!

So I settled right down and dealt with the mess: roll, roll, roll, unstick, unstick, unstick. Then I cut it into several-inch pieces, which I placed in a 13" by 9" pan. I ended up with eight cinnamon rolls, which looked mighty small in that pan. I covered them with plastic, and put them in a slightly warmed oven for 45 minutes.

[Insert a 45-minute interlude where you may do whatever you wish. Trolly-olly-oo, Trolly-olly-ay!]

When I came back, they looked marvelous. Fat and cinnamon-rollish. Ah, finally. I sighed with happiness. They were starting to look like they were supposed to. These were going to be just delicious! I got out the cinnamon and brown sugar and tossed a little bit more of each on top, then stuck them in the oven at 400 degrees for 25 minutes.

They came out a bit browner than I might have suspected, and I worried they might be a bit burnt, at least along the four corners. I think next time I'd check them at about 20 and 22 minutes, although my husband assured me later that the tiny bit of crunch he encountered provided a delectable contrast to the otherwise smooth cinnamon bun.

While they were baking, I mixed up the icing, which turned out absolutely marvelous. In fact, if nothing else, make note of the icing! I used one 8-oz package of cream cheese, 1/4 cup of butter, and 2 cups of powdered sugar (if I owned a sifter, I'd have sifted it, but I didn't, so I didn't, and it turned out just fine anyhow, so there). In the end, in went the three tablespoons of heavy cream; oh, how creamy and silky it made the texture! I imagine you could use milk if you didn't have cream, but it just wouldn't be as luxuriously creamy.

I also added a tiny bit of vanilla, just a half teaspoon, which is not in the recipe. Next time, I'd add more vanilla, maybe a teaspoon or even two. I'd used the old trick of softening the cream cheese by soaking it in warm water for 10 minutes (put it in a plastic bag first if you're worried about water getting in), so the hand-held mixer had no problem at all mixing up the icing.

The instant the cinnamon rolls came out of the oven, I drenched them with the icing. It seemed at the time like way more icing than you might actually need, but we are icing lovers, so on it all went.

We gave it maybe 20 minutes to cool before my husband cut the first cinnamon roll. This is the point where I took the photo above. :-) While I was taking this picture, he was sitting at the kitchen table absolutely DEVOURING the cinnamon roll, and moaning with happiness. He gave me a bite. OH MY - WOW - ARE THEY EVER GOOD! "If Jesus came to the front door right now, he could have one," my husband said; "Anybody else, I'd physically defend these cinnamon rolls."

So there you have it. The cinnamon rolls took a while, they made a great big mess, and they turned out absolutely DELICIOUS. Later in the evening, I could even SMELL the cinnamon and brown sugar in my hair. I smelled delicious! No wonder my husband couldn't stop kissing me. I smelled good enough to nibble on. :-)

The song to accompany this story is Neil Young, with Cinnamon Girl.

The homemade cinnamon roll recipe from The Inspired Home

Ingredients for cinnamon rolls:
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon (1 packet) quick rising yeast
4 cups flour
2 eggs
1 and 1/2 cup butter (just shy of a pound)
2 tablespoons cinnamon
1 cup light brown sugar
1 8-oz package cream cheese (recipe calls for 3/4 cup, I used just a bit more)
2 cups powdered sugar
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Possibly related postings in the ongoing baking series, Oven Mitts of Fury: Tales from a Methodist Kitchen.

A Was Once an Apple Pie
In Which I Make Ice Cube Apple Pies
Tiny Apple Pie Redemption