Cinnamon Buns! - February 19th, 2009

Because my last post didn't really have any food porn, I've included a huge dose in this post. One main reason was because I was playing around with my new flash.

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My younger brother randomly wanted to make cinnamon buns and somehow got my mom into it. We searched online and used a couple of recipes as a reference for the dough. Being my mom, she ended up just adding flour, warm water and sugar by instincts and by working the dough.

After you mix everything together, you have to kneed the dough and then you have to let it rise, by covering the dough (so that it doesn't dry out) and leave it in a warm area in the house.

When the dough has risen, you have to knead the dough a bit more and then roll it out.

This is the cinnamon sugar mixture we made. At first, there was too much cinnamon so I added a bit more brown sugar and white sugar.

The width of the dough really depends on how big you want the cinnamon rolls to be. Because we were testing out the first batch, my mom rolled the dough to about half an inch. We spread some melted butter and sprinkled the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. Kinda looks like a huge Beavertail.

When you start to tightly roll the whole thing together, make sure you spread more butter on the dough that will be rolled into the cinnamon sugar. Why? It's to help the sugar mixture stick to the dough. Plus, a bit more butter just makes it that much better. lol

Depending on how large you want your cinnamon rolls to be, cut the rolls out with a knife. Place them on a greased baking pan and put it in a 350 degree oven (on the middle rack) until the tops are golden brown.

Not done yet...

While waiting for the first batch to bake, my mom mixed some dough and sugar mixture together with the intention of making Beavertails. I jumped in and explained that all they do is take the dough, stretch it out, deep fry them, slather butter on top and then sprinkle/dip it in the cinnamon sugar mixture... so that's what we did - kind of. My mom decided to cut out triangles for some reason. Meh. Cool looking design!

She deep fried them...

Then my brother and I spread butter and sprinkled them with the cinnamon sugar mixture. They were alright. I've made better ones in high school (for an accounting project). Anyway, good snack... but still waiting for them cinnamon buns!

They're done baking!

My brother attempted to whip up icing (icing sugar, butter, a bit of water and a bit of vanilla extract) but kinda failed, so I fixed it for him and it turned out great. Tada!

This is the second batch of cinnamon buns. They were baked the next morning.

I didn't want to mention this before, but doesn't it look like we made these during a sunny day? Well, I hate to break it to you.. but the light was courteously provided by my beautiful, new, SB900 Nikon flash. ^__^. We actually made the dough around 7pm and then rolled out the dough, etc. around 9pm - meaning there was very little/no sunlight.

After an awesome lunch of my homemade pho and almond jello with fruit cocktail, snacking on homemade cinnamon buns topped off a great day.

~ Christine

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