Cinnamon Rolls

We made some awesome cinnamon rolls a couple of weeks ago, and I just realized, when I made my other post and someone emailed me asking about it.

I have made cinnamon rolls with regular bread dough, rolled up, with butter, cinnamon, and sugar as filling before, and with whipped cream cheese, powdered sugar, and a touch of milk for the frosting. However, I found the best cinnamon roll recipe and I find the dough handles much better. The recipe is copyrighted, so I am only going to direct you to his website. The recipe is by Alton Brown of Food TV's "Good Eats". The episode is called "House of the Rising Bun" which I happened to catch while at my mom's house (we don't have cable). Ruth decided to make them for her Sunday School Class party, and we were in love! This is a direct link to the recipe.

When you make cinnamon rolls with ANY recipe, though, the technique for rolling them will make a huge difference. As you can tell, I altered the recipe a bit in that I am using 100% fresh ground white wheat flour. I think cinnamon rolls taste awesome whole grain!

roll out your dough into a rectangle-ish shape.

Press your filling down into the dough as much as possible.

Roll slowly starting at one end, and pinching it as you go.

then come back again from the other end. Repeat this process until you have rolled the whole thing up.

Pinch it closed.

slice your rolls off in 1" increments (about), and place them in a buttered baking dish. We are using a disposable one, as these went to our piano instructor's house. :-) It's a good idea to keep disposable pans on hand for this sort of thing, whenever you see them go on sale.

These are "overnight" cinnamon rolls in this exact recipe, but you don't have to make them overnight. You can let them rise and bake them immediately too.