I made cinnamon rolls!
Well, I made the recipe for them, anyway. Cinnamon rolls have been a long-standing culinary foe of mine. I'm a pretty skilled baker if I do say so myself, yet somehow these damn things have somehow always eluded me. Still, that doesn't stop me trying periodically, so the other day, seeing as there's no hot water (again), I figured what the hell, let's get batter all over the kitchen.
(I did!)
Dough - what you'll need:
Right. So I used this Romanian recipe as a starting point, so I'll share with you what they recommend you use there, with my own comments.
- 500 g flour - worth noting that my dough simply refused to harden and stop being all gooey, despite using about 750g flour all in all. In hindsight, a little more wouldn't have hurt, but not being sure about the recipe, I didn't want them to turn out like little cinnamony rocks;
- fresh yeast (I used 40g, the recipe lists 25g);
Nah, you know what, fuck it. I'll just tell you what I used.
- Teaspoon of sugar;
- Tbsp of oil (you can substitute with butter if you're more comfortable with that);
- 300 ml milk;
- 4 eggs (the recipe only used the yolks, which I found out after I'd dumped the entire egg in. Maybe that's where I went a bit wrong.);
- Dash of salt;
- Grated lemon zest;
- Vanilla-flavor sugar (or vanilla extract);
It's a remarkably easy recipe. First, you want to activate the yeast. So you heat up the milk (it doesn't need to be boiling, just warm), then add to a little cup with the yeast and the sugar.
You can also add a sprinkling of flour here (the recipe does it, and I did also, though this usually works without as well). Leave that for 5 minutes or so, if possible somewhere warm.
Once the yeast has risen a bit (you'll know it's activated), dump it in some kind of recipient/mixing bowl, together with the eggs (or yolks, depending who you're going with. Different schools.), vanilla, salt, oil and the lemon zest. Personally, I'm not a fan of citrus zest due to pesticides. However, for this special occasion, I went with some bio lemons, which I scrubbed carefully with baking soda. That ought to help. I hope.
Right, you also want to add HALF the flour here and mix for a few minutes until everything's integrated. Afterwards, you want to add the rest of the flour and mix some more (I used a dough hook, you probably should too, otherwise the dough gets a bit hard to mix by hand or a regular whisk/mixer).
Once the goo is homogenized, cover with a towel and leave to rise (also somewhere warm) for 15 mins or so. Meanwhile...
Cream - What you'll need:
- 200 g butter;
- 100 g brown granulated sugar;
- Cinnamon (who woulda thought) and cocoa (optional);
Just mix the butter, sugar and generous helpings of cinnamon and cocoa together until you get an even mix. Mine was a bit chunky. Guess the sugar wasn't fine enough or the butter melty enough. I don't f-ing know, man. It mixed.
Once the dough has grown a bit, send it off to college, wish it a nice life. Or just lay out some baking paper and flatten it out. I used cinnamon powder both on the paper and on top of the dough to make it less sticky. Again, it was very gooey, which also made it hard to roll it when we got to that. But first, you want to spread the cream mixture as evenly as you can over the dough.
Next, you wanna roll it tightly enough. Mine didn't work out so well, which also prevented me from cutting it here, which is what you're supposed to. If your creation can withstand it, take a great big knife and portion out slices. Mine yielded 7, but I was slicing while the roll was mid-bake, so could only get so many cuts in before it started disintegrating. You should get 8-10 rolls if you did it better.
Ideally, you've sliced the cake before putting it into the oven. By the way, now's a good time to start heating it at about 180 C.
Frosting - what you'll need:
- 200 g cooking/whipping cream;
- 100 g powdered sugar;
- 50 g soft butter.
The original recipe also called for some vanilla extract, but I forgot that, and it came out okay. So.
Mix all that, then pour over your rolls. Set to bake for 30-35 mins. You'll know that they should look like.
All in all, it didn't come out as what I was hoping it would, but I don't really mind. I'm not precious about cooking, despite enjoying it. I don't like people who are too rigid and think food should only look a certain way. I think there's much more enjoyment in someone preparing a meal for you, or being the one who does that. Regardless of what it looks like.
Anyway, while the rolls didn't come out looking exactly like they're supposed to, they tasted damn fine. You can serve them out of the oven, or reheat them later. I was mighty happy with the result, even if they're not gonna line the window of some bakery anytime soon. So maybe it is thhe inside that counts.
Inside of my belly right now for sure :D Enjoy.
