Thursday, January 1, 2015

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

January 1, 2015


Recipe
Overnight Cinnamon Rolls from Good Eats



Our family tradition for Christmas breakfast is cinnamon rolls. We have been using the store-bought rolls that come in a tube: you twist it open on Christmas morning, bake the rolls, add the icing, and you get fresh, warm rolls with a minimum of fuss. However, I've always wanted to make rolls from scratch but I didn't know how to prepare good cinnamon rolls, in a short time, until now.


A week or so before Christmas, Alton Brown published a link to his recipe for Overnight Cinnamon Rolls Facebook. Most of the work is done the previous evening: dough is made, it rises, it is rolled out, filled, rolled up, and cut into rolls. These are kept in the refrigerator overnight. The following morning the rolls rise for half an hour, bake for half an hour, are iced, and eaten fresh and warm from the oven. It takes a little more time than the convenient place-and-bake rolls, but not too long and the wait is worthwhile for good, homemade rolls.


I made these rolls for Christmas 2014 and found that we liked them. Cinnamon rolls are not health food, not everyday fare, but often they are too sweet or too rich or too big or too bland. These rolls suffer none of these drawbacks. They have a great texture and flavor, especially when fresh, without being too sweet or too rich. As a bonus, they are good leftover, too, just needing to be warmed in the microwave oven. To verify that we really do like them we had them New Year's morning, too, and they were even better.