Quick and Easy Cinnamon Rolls

Book Update:  I discovered “Bake It Like You Mean It” by Gesine Bullock-Prado at the library which a book FULL of fancy cakes.  I’m talking FANCY cakes.  Like the beautiful cake on the cover requires 24 egg yolks for the chocolate roulade.  Not even counting the vanilla cake, buttercream and ganache portions of the cake.  The buttercream requires a mere 15 egg whites and 3 pounds of butter.  Did I mention the cake is a 10″ round??  The Banana Caramel Slices cake looks absolutely divine, but requires 4 different items to make.  Maybe when the kids have moved out of the house….

Recipe Update: I have tried to make quick cinnamon rolls several times and even <gasp> America’s Test Kitchen seemed to disappoint.  The ATK recipe requires quite a few extra ingredients and the dough is nearly impossible to roll.  But now that I’m a Wildtree consultant, I can order all of their items and try them out.  One of those items was “Sunday Morning Cinnamon Rolls.”  The mix is $9, easy to make and delicious.  In fact, it was the most delicious quick cinnamon roll I had ever had, and I quickly went to work trying to come up with their recipe.  The ingredients are listed on the box which I used as a starting point for the recipe.  If I had been smart, I would have weighed the bags inside the “Sunday Morning Cinnamon Rolls” mix!  But that’s okay.  I created a suitable duplicate recipe to make their $9 cinnamon roll mix…. and subsequently put myself out of business.  Doh!  Actually, the Wildtree Cinnamon Rolls mix is USDA Organic, and this recipe is not necessarily organic.

In theory, you could also make your own “box mix” by pre-mixing the dough dry goods, the filling and the icing.  The icing would require a specialty ingredient to be a duplicate of the box mix.  Wildtree uses vanilla powder to create the vanilla flavor in the icing.  This is an ingredient available to regular consumers and sounds fun to have actually…. but not something in everyone’s pantry, so I used vanilla extract instead in my mix.

Both kids gave these rolls 2 thumbs up!

Quick and Easy Cinnamon Rolls
9 rolls

Dough:
2 cups (10 oz.) AP flour
2 Tb. sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
4 Tb. butter, softened
1/2 cup milk
1 egg

Filling:
1 cup brown sugar
3 tsp. cinnamon
1 and 1/2 Tb. milk

Icing:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2-2 tsp. milk

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2.  Spray a 9″x9″ square pan with baking spray.
3.  In a great big bowl:  mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together.  Add the butter, milk and egg.  Mix until the dough forms.  Knead 5 times.
4.  In a smaller bowl:  mix the brown sugar with the cinnamon.  Add the milk and stir into a paste.
5.  Onto a floured surface, roll the dough into a 9″x14″ rectangle.
6.  Spread the brown sugar mix onto the dough leaving a 1/2″ at the short end free of brown sugar.
7.  Roll your rolls starting at the short end and finish at the end free of brown sugar.  Start in the middle and work your way out to the sides.  Continue to roll and press gently together.  Rolling the short end up will give you 9 – 1″ size rolls.
8.  Take a serrated knife or dental floss and cut 9 rolls out of the log.
9.  Put the rolls into the pan.  Cut side should always be up when dealing with cinnamon or orange rolls.
10.  Bake for 25-30 minutes – they will be light golden brown.
11.  Cool for 5-10 minutes.
12.  Mix the powdered sugar, vanilla and 1/2 tsp. of milk together.  Add milk little by little until the icing is the consistency you want it – usually a drizzle.
13.  Drizzle icing over the rolls.