Cinnamon Roll Recipe

Cinnamon Roll mmmmmm.

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:

Rolls:
1 1/4 oz. package. Yeast
1 cup. warm milk
1/2 cup. Caster (granulated/white) sugar
1/3 cup. melted butter
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
4 cups. all-purpose flour

Filling:
1/2 cup butter softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
3 tbs. cinnamon (use the best cinnamon you can find)

Icing: (optional)
7 tbs. butter, softened
1 1/2 cups icing sugar
1/4 cup (2 oz.) cream cheese
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 t. salt (if desired I left it out)

Directions:

Rolls:

Dissolve yeast in the warm milk.

Mix in sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour. Mix well.

Turn dough out onto lightly floured surface it will be a very sticky dough so you may need a lot of flour to knead it. Knead into a large ball. Place in a clean bowl and cover with a tea towel and put somewhere warm (I put the covered bowl near the fire as it was the only place not freezing); let rise 1-2 hours.

Preheat oven to 360 F (180 c).

Roll dough into a 21 x 16 wide rectangle. With the butter softened, spread it generously over the dough (I used my fingers but you can use a spatula).

Sprinkle the filling over the buttered rectangle.

Roll the dough up carefully from the long edge. (I rolled from the long side but you can roll from the short side to make a smaller amount of fatter rolls)

round and round we go

Using a very sharp knife cut into 1 inch wide rolls, making sixteen large rolls (or carefully cut the roll in half and measure out the dough to get 24 smaller pieces that can be tucked into muffin tins/muffin papers). Alternatively if you want big fat rolls, cut them wider.

Grease (butter) your baking pan (11x 15 pan or muffin tins or use muffin cases) Then place rolls in pan and into oven. Bake until the rolls are browned around 15 to 20 minutes (depending on your oven).

Take them out and cover them in icing.

Filling:
While dough is rising, prepare the filling and the icing.
Soften butter.
After dough has been rolled out into a rectangle, spread the softened butter all over.
Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and sprinkle over entire buttered rectangle.



Icing:

Cream together butter, icing sugar, cream cheese, and vanilla with an electric mixer. Spread onto the hot rolls.

nom nom nom

cook's notes: I have been suffering withdrawal pains lately for all things sugary sweet, cinnamon drenched and American and in that vein I have been mulling over this recipe I have for making Cinnamon Buns (an much altered version of a Cinnabon clone recipe I found long long ago) which as anyone knows are the embodiment of all things sickly sweet, fatty, and overloaded with cinnamon and cream cheese icing. They have helped me get through some very tough times in the past. There are dozens upon dozens of cinnamon roll recipes on the interwebs, this is the one I use and have for years, though I do alter it from time to time, little tweaks here and there until one day the recipe will be as perfect as I can possibly make it. Until then its a pretty damn fine recipe.

It's also really important to use the best cinnamon you can find, I used cinnamon that I bought at Chatsworth Farm Shop and it is amazing how different cinnamon can taste from the regular (cheap) storebrand.

Tales on the Farm

When I was small we lived in an old farm house in rural New York State. My mother is of the opinion it was an awful place full of hicks and horrible winters. We moved away when I was 5 but I can still remember the wonderland I thought the farm was. We had goats, geese, chickens, cows, cats and dogs, I was in kid heaven, but I had my enemies too.

The billy Goat for instance.. he loathed me, just me was fine with my parents, with all the other animals but hated one small girl child with wild brown hair and holes in the knees of her jeans. Every day my mother milked the goats and every day the billy goat would rear up on his hind legs, paw at the air and bleat at me. I was terrified so my mother gave me a stick, I'm not sure if that counts as animal abuse or not but the Billy Goat would loom over me and I would wave the stick in his general direction, and miracle of miracles he would back off. For a bit anyway then he would loom nearer and stand on two legs challenging me, and I would brandish my stick and wave it at him.

We also had a goose and gander, the goose thought my mother was her mother and would follow my mother everywhere on the farm, into the house out of the house, everywhere that my mother went the goose went. The gander on the other hand, well he was pure evil, spawn of the devil himself. Everyday after kindergarten he would wait by the fence for me to step off the school bus.

I would hop off the school bus, the big bus if the bridge was ok, but the short bus if the bridge was broken, or under repair and no heavy trucks allowed, slip through the gate and there would be the gander. He would charge me honking and flapping his wings and I would run in terror to the farm house braids flying. If I wasn't quick enough the gander would nip at my heels, and my clothes. This happened every single school day. I still don't know what I ever did at the age of 5 to incur the wrath of the farmyard.

I had one more enemy though, one of the cows, a brown Jersey cow with beautiful dark liquid eyes and long lustrous lashes. My parents thought it might be fun to put me on the cows back. The cow thought otherwise and bolted leaving me hanging round her neck as she bucked and kicked rampaging through the barn until I fell off into a rubber feed bucket listening to my parents laughter. I loved it all though and missed it when we moved on to new adventures in California.

Why am I reminiscing about the past? Because I am feeling a bit lost and homesick at the moment. This is the first autumn since I moved to England that I won't be flying back home to the states. I know very well that this is my home here, my house, but I miss the states, I miss my parents, and my friends Meg, Jaci, and Gin, I miss pumpkin patches, apple orchards, Cinnabuns, yard sales, and just being in the US of A. M says we will be flying to Seattle in spring, then the long drive across Washington State to reach my parents home in Northern Idaho. Its a long time till spring though and my thoughts will be with my other home. What I wouldn't give for some decent Mexican or Vietnamese, or even french fries and a strawberry shake at Denny's!

Tonight my friend Frizbe is taking me and the kids to Asda Walmart, for a wander down the Halloween isle so I can have a few moments to look at glittering plastic spiders, vampire teeth, horrible candy and orange plastic jack-o-lanterns. A small piece of America in Derbyshire.

Homesick for Americana

Today I have been looking through some pictures stored on my phone and the picture here is one of thoses. The building is This big Fruit and Antique mall in Thorpe, Washington on the I90, you can hardly miss it, looking at the pictue makes me smile though as H thinks its great becuse they have apples, candy, and lots of clocks that his pappy might like. Its one of the places we stop on the drive from Seattle to Coure D Alene , Id where my parents live. The drive is 5 hours more or less depending on potty, coffee and food stops.

I have been talking to my friend Meg*, on messenger a few times and I think thats made me feel rather homesick for the states, and California specifically, though I do like Seattle, and Idaho is georgeous and very friendly, but with talking to my best friend since high school and looking up some classmates on http://www.classmates.com/ I have been missing the bread.

Sourdough bread that is, as if there is any other, and the bagels from the bagel store, and most of all I miss hanging around with Meg, We used to have this movie ritual, I'm not sure M ever really got it when we tried to explain, but we would always go see films together, mostly sci-fi at that, and into the movie we would sneek not bottles of pop or candy, but giant sized fruit smoothies, some sort of raspberry concoction for me, and something tropical for Meg. On one occasion to a matinee for some forgettable movie we snuck in some Chinese. Orange Chicken and noodles to be exact from the panda express at Santa Rosa Plaza Mall. The movie was B but we had fun eating Chinese in the theater and talking over the bad dialogue. We were also the only ones in the theater so we didn't get caught. Oh the hours spent sitting in the upper floor of the down town barns and nobles coveting books and watching the people down below.

Hopefully next year we will drag H along to Cali, and show him all my old haunts. Bodega Bay, the Larkspur ferry, Pier 39, Sonoma and its wineries and the little coffee garden Cafe, Mary's Pizza Shack, Down town Petaluma all the old favorites that I have dragged M around in the past. I think because I was so sick durring my pregnacy with H that I never really got to say goodbye to Northern California because I missed out on the trip we were supposed to take to help my parents move to Idaho, I never got to have that one last look around, that last bit of salty air from bodega bay, and the best fish and chips in the world. Oh well next year then, H will be four and old enough to remember it all.

P.S. Meg if you are reading this get off your ass and get that passport and come visit me! ;o)