Homemade Cinnamon Rolls: Failure and Success

Christmas morning brings the tradition of cinnamon rolls filling the house with their delicious aroma. My mother makes the cinnamon rolls. She goes back-and-forth from making from scratch (using a recipe from her Betty Crocker Cookbook) and the tubed rolls available at your local grocery store. My family's tradition still goes on even though we all don't live under one roof anymore. The cinnamon rolls still get made and enjoyed whatever time we arrive to the house for our family get-together.

This year I wanted to attempt making cinnamon rolls from scratch. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy the connivence of the refrigerated tubes of dough all ready to be separated, placed on a cookie sheet, baked in the oven and iced when done...but there is the simple joy I find in baking that leads me to keep making things from scratch. I used this recipe here found on allrecipes.com for both the cinnamon rolls and the icing. I made the recipe twice...and not because the first batch turned out great and it was a big hit with everyone. I made a slight mistake the first time and didn't get past making the dough.

about to over flow! 

gooey and a pain to clean out!

My first attempt came Christmas Eve. The plan was to make for breakfast on Christmas Eve, then take some to my family and some to Sonny's family. I got up, started mixing everything in the bread maker, hit start and went about getting around for the day while the bread machine did its magic. When I came back to check on the dough it had filled the container and was more moist than excepted. It was then I realized that I put in too much water! I put a full cup of water when the recipe calls for a 1/4 cup. Whoops! Needless to say the batch was ruined and I didn't even attempt to salvage anything. Into the garbage went the dough. In attempts to clean up, the drain strainer and the dish brush were also thrown away due to the gooey mess I made.

cinnamon roll filling

The second (and successful) attempt occurred a week later for the new year. This time I only used a 1/4 cup water. :) This time the dough turned out how it was suppose to and plopped right out. When rolling up the dough it was a little hard to keep the filling from sliding across the dough instead of rolling with it.  The recipe says it should slice into 16 rolls, I sliced 22 rolls. I always enjoy getting more servings out a recipe than it calls for. That means more to be shared and less calories per serving! :)  I made the rolls up the night before. I placed some rolls into the fridge overnight and the rest I froze for later use. In the morning, I took out the rolls from the fridge, let them rise and baked for 20 minutes in the oven. While they baked I made up the cream-cheese frosting included with the recipe. I froze the leftover icing for later use with the extra rolls in the freezer.

warm, gooey and delicious

The cinnamon rolls tasted delicious! They were the perfect start to a snowy morning and the last day before heading back to work. There is a lot of butter in these cinnamon rolls, almost 2 full sticks! Not the best treat if you're watching what you eat. The recipe calls for pecans in the filling, but those can easily be taken out depending on those enjoying the treat's preferences. I wouldn't change anything about this recipe. Next Christmas I believe I'll be making the cinnamon rolls.

Note: To freeze the rolls I placed them on parchment covered cookie sheets until they froze (about 2 hrs). Then I placed them in freezer bags...allowing me to pull the number of cinnamon rolls desired out and bake up fresh.