Little Bits of Heaven

This past weekend I had a hankering to bake, I’ll blame it on the deliciously cool weather, and I decided to give the yeast breads a go. I have made bread before with varying degrees of success and but decided to try a new recipe this time. I did some searching and chose this recipe from allrecipes.com. If you have never visited allrecipes before it can come in handy, especially the search feature that lets you enter ingredients that you want (and those you don’t!) and it will search their database. I have gotten some great recipes that way. Anyway, I wanted to take the cinnamon bread to a few places in the morning and did not want to wake up at 6 am on a Saturday so the overnight aspect seemed perfect.

I made just a few adjustments to the recipe. I added a little vanilla to the eggs before I mixed them in. Who doesn’t like a hint of vanilla? I did have a little trouble with getting the milk the right temperature before adding the yeast to it. I thought I would be smart and use a thermometer, but realized I was reading the Celsius side at about the time it registered 150+ on the Fahrenheit side. But to my defense the Celsius was in red and my eye was just draw to it! The milk escaped un-scalded and then I went about trying to cool it so it wouldn’t hurt the yeast (which if you have never worked with before is a little fickle). It was a tedious process of switching containers and pulling in and out of the refrigerator. Finally it was cool enough to add the yeast and follow the recipe as directed.

I got a little nervous because after an hour the dough did not seem to have doubled, but I was getting tired of waiting and proceeded to shaping the dough. Since I was going to be delivering these to a couple shops downtown I didn’t think that a traditional cinnamon roll shape would be easy to eat so I opted to make a pull-a-part, something I had never tried before. After punching down the dough I split it in half and then kept splitting the dough until I had pieces about the size of an unshelled walnut. Then I dipped each in a bowl of melted butter and then coated it in the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Sidenote: I like to add extra spice, there never seems to be enough in a recipe. I also added a little bit of ground ginger and some freshly grated nutmeg. Then I placed the pieces in buttered dishes and put them in the refrigerator to rise overnight.

I was skeptical, but when I checked on them in the morning they had filled out the dishes nicely and I popped them into the preheated oven. I will say that they didn’t take a long as a standard cinnamon roll would to bake. So keep an eye on them! When they came out I immediately drizzled a quick icing (milk, powdered sugar and vanilla) over the top. The icing in the recipe didn’t seem appealing, corn syrup? no thanks!

Cinnamon Pull-a-part

I was happy with the result, they weren’t quite as gooey as I would have liked, but I think that will just take some adjusting with baking time and temp. And next time I might add a little cream cheese to the icing to cut the raw powdered sugar taste. All in all a successful dive back into baking and a relatively easy alternative to those canned cinnamon rolls that tempt you at the grocery store but you know don’t really taste good!

One Comment

  1. Oh Tessa….THIS LOOKS AMAZING! I love love love allrecipes.com. Might I suggest the Baking Bird to you? http://thebakingbird.blogspot.com She is pretty great….

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