This could be the start of something new

- Gabriella Montez & Troy Bolton

The Recipe

Cinnamon Roll Recipe: Tastes of Lizzy T Cinnamon Rolls

Filling: Classic brown sugar & cinnamon

Frosting Recipe: Cream Cheese Icing (with cinnamon)

The Attempt

After nearly a month off, I'm back at it again like Daniel and his white vans. But I finally tried a new recipe! This one didn't even have mashed potato, which was a bit bittersweet for me. Sweet because it was quicker to make since I didn't need to make the mashed potato. But bitter because mashed potato in cinnamon rolls was a bit of an odd, fun trait to make them a bit more unique.

There is nearly always an occasion for the cinnamon rolls, and this time the rolls were for a 10-year city group reunion for the group I was in during college. The group started the year before I went to college and continues to meet at a UNO dorm. The members and leaders change over the years as people come and go from college, but the reunion a fun event to catch up with old friends, meet some of the current college students, and reflect on the fruit that group has been blessed to see over the past decade. It was definitely an event worth some celebratory cinnamon rolls.

It was time to try a new recipe. I had nothing against the previous one, but I have to keep experimenting to find the best, most consistent recipe. I made some tweaks to it though. The recipe called for all-purpose flour, but I still had enough bread flour that I used that instead. Also, the recipe called for pouring a half cup of heavy cream over the rolls when they baked. I've seen videos of "cinnamon roll hacks" where pouring heavy cream over pre-made tubed cinnamon rolls can make the rolls very similar to Cinnabon rolls. However, I just wanted to see how the basic rolls turned out, without any fancy tricks or hacks. So, I didn't do that part.

I noticed some differences while making the new recipe. The dough ball felt a lot more dense and less tacky this time. The ball also did not raise near as much as the other recipe during the first raise, which made me worried that I would be bringing some very flat rolls to the reunion. Lastly, this recipe called for an obscene amount of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon for the filling. Most other recipes call for three to four tablespoons of butter and one-half or two-thirds cup of brown sugar. This one called for a half cup of butter (eight tablespoons!) and a full cup of brown sugar. I lathered the rolled-out dough with as much butter as I could, but still had close to two tablespoons of butter that I could not apply. The extra brown sugar also made the filling layer very thoroughly covered. In fact, the brown sugar and cinnamon was often being pushed along on the seam while I rolled up the sheet. I needed to roll it up much more loosely for the filling to stay in.

However, they baked well and had a nice rise in the over. They swelled up to a nearly perfect size. Large enough to split in half, but small enough where you still felt good about eating the whole thing. I made cream cheese icing to pair with the rolls, which was a bit lighter than the cream cheese frosting I made in the last attempt. I also tossed in some cinnamon into the icing for a little extra flair.

The Review

Things I appreciated about this attempt:

• I tried a new recipe, and it came out successfully! The dough raised, and the abundance of brown sugar and butter helped make the interior gooey.

• Nothing went wrong! I didn't forget any major ingredients this time, which helped make this attempt much more relaxing than some of the previous ones. I was still on a bit of a time crunch since I volunteered to do some painting that day, but thankfully I still had enough time to relax and read, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality this time, while the dough raised.

• I've struggled with slightly burning a couple of the last attempts. I set the oven timer a couple minutes below the suggested about, checked on them at that time, and the added a couple minutes. This extra check prevented me from overdoing them.

  • I also rotated the pans between the oven racks midway, so both pans were very similar in how thoroughly the had baked.

  • I think I made the right call by not pouring the heavy cream over this batch. It already had a bunch of butter and sugar, so I'm hesitant that the cream would have make the rolls way too sweet. The cream might be a better touch for if the rolls are for a dessert.

• The dash of cinnamon in the cream cheese icing was a tasty little touch to an otherwise basic icing.

Things I learned from this attempt:

• Be careful with the amount of butter in the filling. The excess butter leaked out of the rolls and into the pan while baking, taking brown sugar and cinnamon along with it. I will decrease the amount of butter in the filling by about half next time.

• I need to look into oven temperatures and baking times for all-purpose flour versus bread flour. These rolls got a little dry and crunchy on the exterior. I'm curious if that was due to the bread flour reacting slightly different in the oven than the all-purpose flour that the recipe called for.

• The recipe also called for instant dry yeast, and I used active dry yeast. What is the difference you ask? Active dry yeast needs to be activated prior to use while instant dry yeast is ready as soon as you open the package. Active dry yeast must be dissolved in a warm liquid to be activated. Instant dry yeast can be mixed directly into dry ingredients and will readily dissolve in the dough's moisture. It doesn't need the extra step to dissolve and wait to activate in a liquid. You can generally interchange one type of yeast for the other, but active dry yeast may be slower to rise. For this reason, I gave the rolls extra time to rise. That is all stuff I never knew until this recipe.