Cinnamon Rolls

First of all... Happy Birthday Dad! He's probably the number one fan of this blog, so if anyone will see a birthday shout out on here, it's him.

Last week, for a Labor Day treat, Brett and I made some homemade cinnamon rolls. Believe it or not (I hardly do) I got this recipe from a fellow blogger waaaaay back in May of 2008. This recipe has been on my mind for over two years and I'm just now getting around to trying it! These rolls proved to be well worth the wait.

If you want to eat cinnamon rolls for breakfast, then you need to start making them the night before. So Sunday night we mixed up the dough (we used our stand mixer like the recipe says, but Brett would have rather done it by hand). I kneaded it for eight minutes and then we let it rise in our usual way (covered with plastic wrap, in the off oven, with a pan of hot water beneath) for 2 hours.

When it came out, it was time for Brett to do his thing! He punched it down and rolled it out into the proper dimensions and I slathered on the softened butter and sprinkled on the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture. Some of the brown sugar mixture sprinkled onto the mat instead of the dough, which is almost inevitable if you're me, but wincingly painful to watch if you're Brett.

I backed away and let Brett roll the dough into a log. I have no doubt that I would have made a giant mess. He, of course, was extremely careful and neat.

Next, Brett (again, I would have made a mess of this) sliced the log into 18 equal pieces and put them into the greased baking dishes (I can handle spraying Pam without making a mess...sometimes). The recipe called for two square 9x9 pans, but we used a 9x13 baking dish and a 9x5 loaf pan. It worked out fine.

After being refrigerated over night. I got them out and put them (still covered) in a cold oven with a pan of hot water underneath to rise for about an hour.

Then they baked for 18 minutes.

They looked ok when we pulled them out. But the real magic is hidden.

We flipped them out onto the cooling rack and simultaneously said, "Oooooh."

I stirred up some simple frosting (powdered sugar and milk). The recipe called for a cream cheese based frosting, but I think cream cheese flavor can be overwhelming sometimes, and I really wanted to be able to taste the cinnamon rolls.

The final product was absolutely wonderful. It got me thinking about Thanksgiving and Christmas and wanting to share these with family (also the fact that there were 18 rolls got me thinking about sharing). This is definitely a special occasion worthy breakfast and I've no doubt we will see these again.

They heat up great in the microwave too. We were eating the leftovers for the rest of the week.