Culturegeeks

Man, with those photos, this is total food porn. And the butternut squash romance was hilarious!

Oh my god… the cinnamon rolls are unbelievable. The recipe calls for too much butter, but the results are incredible. I normally hate maple anything, so I was surprised at how well the icing complimented the rolls.

Seriously, way too much butter. I went light on the first half of the batch and felt bad for not following the recipe. I laid it on thick the second time (still not using as much as it asked) and the result was that I got butter everywhere when I rolled up the dough. It also made it harder to keep the roll together, so the second batch wasn’t as pretty as the first.

Yeah, she does love her butter, doesn’t she? Her latest recipe (French Breakfast Puffs) sound fabulously butter-soaked as well.

I’m dying to try the cinnamon rolls but I find them pretty intimidating. How long did they take you, and how much of a disaster was your kitchen when you finished?

I hear ya. I put it off for a good two weeks, thinking it would be a horrendous nightmare. As it turns out, the fact that you can refrigerate the dough for a day or two provides the perfect opportunity to wuss out halfway through. That’s exactly what I did when I realized I had started the project too late into the evening.

Preparing the dough took a few hours, but not in an active way. It was probably 20 minutes of actual work, plus a couple of hours of waiting around. Rolling it out, buttering the entire kitchen and setting up the pans took about an hour. The nice part is that since you divide the dough in half, the first three pans have time to rise while you roll out the second half. I think my main source of apprehension was that I’m ignorant about baking with yeast. Since I don’t have a thermometer that goes as low as 110 degrees F, I was worried I would mis-judge the temperature, kill the yeast and end up with a ball of funky clay.

The kitchen havoc wasn’t so bad, aside from the butter that dripped off the edge of the counter. If you ever want to feel like an air hockey puck in real life, get some butter on your shoes and move around a tiled area.

I thought her idea of using a dutch oven as a mixing bowl was great, so I did that as well to save on dishes (it also made it easy to cover overnight). The main problem I had was counter space; my kitchen doesn’t really have any. It was a real juggling act to find space for 7 cake pans without setting them on the stove.

The breakfast puffs look great, but it’s too soon to go there with the butter again. I love butter, but I don’t know how she does it.

Diane, what the hell did you do with seven pans of cinnamon rolls? The sheer quantity is half the reason I’m intimidated by this recipe. (The other half is working with yeast, which I have yet to attempt.) I’ve been thinking about trying to cut the recipe in half for my first try, so I don’t waste so much if they turn out shitty.

Oh, I took them to work! That’s what I do with most baked goods — I love a good homemade cookie, but I can’t (and shouldn’t learn to) eat more than a few. I left two pans for my dept, two for my secondary department, and 3 for the pilots. Even though we have some reformed sugar junkies and strict dieters, there weren’t any leftovers. Some days, I think this might be just as true if I left Meow Mix out, so your mileage may vary.

I think you may need to count on giving some away even if you decide to cut the recipe in half - 3 pans doesn’t sound like a lot, but these are really rich and sweet.

I thought about halving the recipe as well, but I can’t go through 3 pans any easier than 7. In the end, gauging the temperature of the milk was the only part that sketched me out. Even when I realized that more butter was not the answer, the only consequence was that the rolls looked sloppier…well that and it made a mess.

That half still tasted great, it was just that they didn’t roll up as snugly and slipped around a bit when they were being transferred to the pan. The rolls seemed to cook a bit faster than I expected, but not by much - I was taking them out at just under 15 minutes.