Cinni-Minis

 I am trying to cook from my pantry for the next few weeks, designing my menu around what I already have on hand rather than shopping from a list of things I don't have. My pantry of canned goods and canisters of things may not resemble a fallout shelter just yet, but it has gotten unwieldy, so it is time to be creative and resourceful as I hack my way through the jungle that is by kitchen pantry (really just my kitchen cabinets).

I was going through the cheese drawer in my fridge the other day and found a ball of leftover puff pastry scraps. Wracking my brain, I thought that this ball of scraps could be re-purposed easily into mini cinnamon rolls. They made a fast, easy and delicious sweet snack, and there's no reason to wait until you have puff pastry scraps. I would gladly make these again using a full sheet of puff pastry.

Cinni-Minis

Ingredients:

• Puff pastry scraps
• melted butter
• turbinado sugar
• 3 T walnuts, chopped
• 1 t cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
2. Mix together the sugar, chopped walnuts and cinnamon.
3. Press together the puff pastry scraps, folding them over onto themselves in a large ball.
4. Place the ball on a piece of parchment paper and with a rolling pin, roll it to a thickness of 1/8 in.
5. Brush melted butter over the surface and sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar and nut mixture over the top.
6. Roll the pastry up like a jelly roll and brush it with more melted butter.
7. Slice into 1/2 in. slices.
8. Place the slices on a parchment-lined cookie sheet, and bake for 12 minutes or until nicely golden brown.

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Cinnamon Rolls

Last month, I posted the recipe to my cinnamon rolls which are a Christmas morning tradition: November 30 - "I Dreamed a Dream."

In years past, I've made them the night before, put them in the fridge for a slow rise overnight and baked them first thing on Christmas morning so they're freshly-made. This year, I was so whipped from my big Christmas Eve dinner, I had planned to make them before turning in, but I fell asleep. I was on the couch watching "It's a Wonderful Life," telling myself, "Just 5 more minutes. I'll get up and make the dough in just 5 ... more ... Zzzzzzzz ...."

Oops.

Fortunately for me, the kids got up at the obscenely early hour of 4:30 am, so I ended up making the dough a little before 5 am and the rolls came fresh and piping-hot out of the oven all set and ready to be devoured at 7.

This year, instead of slathering them in a diabetic-coma-inducing icing, I decided to eat them plain, but hot and slathered with butter.

Still the best thing ever for a special holiday breakfast... or a post-holiday breakfast 4 days later.




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I Dreamed a Dream...

...of cinnamon rolls. My very-special, Christmas morning, to-die-for cinnamon rolls, to be exact.

Clearly, my subconscious is telling me something. Time to gear up for the holiday baking!

I generally only eat these rolls once a year on Christmas morning, because they are very sweet; plus sometimes, the wait is as perversely satisfying as the indulgence itself. Also, they are inextricably linked to the holidays and are laden with memory.

The smell of a batch of cinnamon rolls in the oven evokes those wonderful childhood memories of looking at the impossibly tall, sparkling tree sitting atop a ton of presents; our impatience as my sister and I did our best to wait until an appropriate hour, say 5:30 or 6 to dash into our parents' room and pull their covers off in order to get them out of bed so we could get to the cinnamon rolls and stocking gifts. It's a long-standing family tradition, sitting at the table eating fresh cinnamon rolls slathered with cold butter and tearing into our stocking gifts.

They can be labor-intensive to make if you're not really into baking with yeast dough, but they are so worth your time and effort. I have posted this recipe at another forum over the years, and have gained converts each time.

A word of warning, have a vial of insulin handy. You may also want to opt out of the icing or use a lighter hand when drizzling it on if you can't tolerate sweets.

You can make these the morning of, if you're a super-early riser; otherwise, if your Santa duties leave you begging for the chance to sleep in, you can make them the night before and let them rise overnight in the fridge.

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients

For the Dough:

• 2 ½ to 2 ¾ cups All Purpose flour
• 1/3 cup rolled oats, ground in a food processor
  
• ¼ cup granulated sugar
• 1 package dry yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)
  
• ½ t salt
• ½ stick butter, cut into small pieces
• ¼ cup milk
• ¼ cup water
• 1 egg


For the Filling:


• 2 T butter, melted
• ½ cup packed brown sugar
• 2 t ground cinnamon
• ½ cup golden raisins
• ½ cup walnuts


For the Honey Butter Icing (my favorite):


• 1/3 cup confectioner's sugar
• 2 T butter, softened
• 2 T honey


or

Cream Cheese Icing (for you proles out there):


• 1 stick butter, softened
• 1 1/2 cups confectioner's sugar
• 1/4 cup cream cheese
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• dash of salt

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, combine ¾ cup of flour with the ground oats, granulated sugar, yeast and salt.


2. Heat milk, ½ stick butter and water until warm- NOT hot-about 120° F. Be sure you check the temperature with an accurate thermometer- if the liquid is too hot, it will kill the yeast, then no lovely risen dough!


3. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add the wet to dry ingredients and mix 2 minutes at medium speed with a hand mixer or a stand mixer.
   


4. Add the egg and an additional ½ cup of flour; beat another 2 minutes at high speed.


5. With a spoon, add enough remaining flour to form a soft ball of dough. Knead on lightly floured surface for 5 minutes, until smooth.


6. Cover, let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 1 hour. Punch down the dough.


7. On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to an 18x8 inch rectangle. Brush with melted butter.


8. Take the raisins, walnuts and brown sugar and grind in a food processor about 5 seconds. Mix in a bowl with cinnamon. Then sprinkle this on top of the buttered dough, to within ½ inch of the sides.


9. Roll up, from the long side, until you’ve got a long snake-like roll. Pinch the seams tightly and then cut into 9 equal pieces.


10. Place, cut side up, in a greased 8x8 inch square baking pan.
    
    If you are making them the night before: At this point, you can place the pan in the fridge and let sit overnight. In the morning, take out the dish and let come to room temperature before proceeding with baking.
    
    If you are not making them in advance: Simply cover with a towel and let them rise in a warm place again, for 45 minutes


11. Bake at 350° F for 30 minutes or until done. Let the pan cool on a wire rack.
    


12. Make the icing by mixing together the ingredients in a small bowl, whisking until smooth. Then drizzle over the rolls.

Notes:

1. Now the times I've made these and let them sit overnight in the fridge, I've never had any trouble getting them to rise by the time they go in the oven, but I found this tip from Alton Brown for getting those rolls cold from the fridge to rise a bit more. I think I'll give it a try this year and see if it makes any difference:
   

   Remove the rolls from the refrigerator and place in an oven that is turned off. Fill a shallow pan 2/3-full of boiling water and set on the rack below the rolls. Close the oven door and let the rolls rise until they look slightly puffy; approximately 30 minutes. Remove the rolls and the shallow pan of water from the oven.
   
   Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
   
   When the oven is ready, place the rolls on the middle rack and bake until golden brown, or until the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees F on an instant-read thermometer, approximately 30 minutes.



2. This year, I believe I may halve the recipe for the honey-butter icing. It's so lovely, but too much of it drowns the rolls.
   
   
   See? Check the picture. -->
   
   
   They are drowning in the icing. It is oh-so sinfully good, but the part of me that wants to feed us healthy food cringes.
   


3. I am also giving serious thought to perhaps halving the entire recipe and seeking out a smaller pan. This pan is an 8 x 8 inch baking dish. 9 large rolls is an awful lot of wonderful sweet, cinnamony goodness for one Mommy and two girls to eat. We never eat them all on Christmas morning. I haven't tried freezing the leftovers. I think I'd rather attempt a smaller batch. Perhaps a small casserole dish might do the trick.
   

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Who Wants Coffee Cake?

I am not a sweets for breakfast girl. I have never really liked cold cereal, although occasionally I'll have some granola with yogurt. The smell of sodden Cheerios has always turned my stomach, and I never relished digging down through a bowl of bobbing sugar-nuggets to get to the unnaturally-colored, cloyingly sweet dregs of milk and dissolved cereal.

When faced with a choice of pancakes, french toast, waffles or an omelette with side of hash browns and some greasy breakfast pork-item, I'll always opt for the eggs, potatoes and meat. I make pancakes and crepes for the kids because they like them. I'd rather have savory crepes with a creamy mushroom and herb filling than Natalie's preferred jam-and-yogurt.

My cinnamon buns are a once-a-year treat on Christmas morning, a well-loved tradition not to be ignored, even by me; a summertime stint working in two donut shops 20 years ago has left me with little craving for weekly donuts; but every now and then I am overcome with a craving for coffee cake.

When I mentioned to the girls (early) this morning that I was considering making a coffee cake for breakfast, Lucy had a meltdown. "Nooooooooooooo!" she wailed. "No. Coffee. Cake!!" After a bit of prodding, I realized she thought that it was a cake made from coffee. When I told her that it was just called that because it was a sweet breakfast cake that people could eat with their morning coffee, and that she wasn't obligated to drink any coffee at all in order to have some cake, she relented.

Now, I'm at the end of my usual grocery cycle, and since I'll be traveling for the holiday this week, I did a huge shopping trip recently where I restocked the pantry of several staples; I still have some items stocked away in the freezer. I am tempted to stretch it out and see what meals I can scrape together from my pantry. I love the end of a long grocery cycle - I have to be very creative about what to toss together to make a nice meal. Some of my favorite recipes have come about under those conditions!

Some friends and I were chatting about sharing our "Sandra Lee recipes" you know, those not-quite-from-scratch, shortcut recipes you may rely on but be too embarrassed to cop to using?

One of my favorites is biscuit mix sour cream coffee cake, but I happened to be right out of Bisquick. I did have a bag of New Hope Mills pancake mix, because I don't always feel like making my own batter from scratch. Sue me.

The recipe also calls for sour cream, which I rarely have on hand unless nachos are on the menu. I did have vanilla yogurt and I thought, "Why not substitute it? The yogurt is sour, like the sour cream, and the acid would probably work with the baking powder in the mix as a leavening agent. Besides which, the pancake mix was a buttermilk mix, so there ought to be some acidity already in the bag.

I opted to use brown sugar instead of white (I was out of the regular granulated sugar), substituted chopped nuts instead of flour in the streusel topping, and presto! 25 minutes later, I had a lovely, cinnamony coffee cake which both girls devoured, warm. It was the perfect accompaniment to my coffee this morning.

Cinnamon Coffee Cake
Ingredients:

• 1 1/2 cups pancake mix
  
• 1/2 cup sugar -I used brown sugar because I was out of the white
  
• 1 egg
• 3/4 cup vanilla yogurt (or sour cream)
  
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  

For the streusel:

• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
  
• 3 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Spray an 8-inch square baking dish with cooking spray, or grease it with shortening or butter.
   
2. In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour and sugar.
   
3. Add the yogurt, egg and vanilla extract and mix well. Spread batter into a greased 8-inch square pan.
4. Mix together the chopped nuts, brown sugar, and cinnamon in a medium-sized bowl. add the melted butter and mix well until crumbly.
   
5. Sprinkle topping evenly over the top of the cake batter.
6. Bake for 25 minutes or until a tester inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean.
7. Let cool for 10 minutes before serving.
   

Notes:

• This was tasty and fragrant, but it did not have the fine, moist, delicate crumb of some other coffee cake recipes I've tried.
  
• I don't know if the brown sugar in the cake was at fault or if I should have used more yogurt or added some butter.
  
• Instead of 3/4 cup, I might try 1 cup of yogurt next time.
  
• Perhaps reducing the cooking time to 20 minutes would be advised.
• All in all, still a satisfying treat. Not bad for baking on the fly.
  

Mmmmm.... Don't you just want to dig in?

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