A Recipe Tutorial

For Frugal Friday this week I thought I would share a photo tutorial for an AWESOME recipe - Quiver’s Legendary Cinnamon Rolls. I found this recipe through the Well Trained Mind message boards and it is UNREAL. It's so fat and delicious that I make it 2 or 3 times a year. It's just too rich. This year I decided I would make a bunch of rolls and give them to friends as gifts for Christmas. I did an analysis for the recipe and with the wrapping, foil pans and all the ingredients, it was still under $4.50 per dozen rolls (or a full batch). The biggest cost is the pan and butter - so if you can get either of those cheaply you can do this recipe really frugally! I am making the rolls, freezing them and delivering them frozen. My friends can then defrost the rolls overnight in the fridge and in the morning bake them for fresh, hot cinnamon rolls for breakfast some morning.

Here's the recipe -
"Dough:
1 T. Dry Yeast
1 Cup warm milk
1/3 C. white sugar
1/2 C. melted butter
1 tsp. salt
2 eggs
4 C. flour

Dissolve yeast in warm milk. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Knead into a ball. Let rise until double in size. When ready, roll out to about 1/4 inch thick. Spread with filling.

Filling:
1/4 C. butter, softened
1 C. brown sugar
3 T. cinnamon

Spread butter on dough evenly. Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over dough evenly. Roll dough up. Slice roll into 1 inch slices. Place on a greased pan. Let rise again until doubled. bake 10 min. at 400 degrees.

Icing:
1/2 C. butter, softened
1 1/2 C. powdered sugar
1 oz. cream cheese
2 T. whipping cream
1 tsp. vanilla extract
pinch of salt

Beat until fluffy. When rolls are hot, spread lots of icing on them.

To make these the night before needed, skip the final rising step. Let rise overnight in the fridge. In the morning, bake!" This recipe is courtesy of Jean, a cinnamon roll saint!

I used my bread machines today for the dough, which made it SUPER easy. Yes, "machines". I had an old junker machine I got for about $5, and then I upgraded to a swanky machine. Old junky machines are GREAT for dough. In fact, if you like to bake your own bread or pizza dough buy a thrift store $3 to $5 machine and you will be set for a long, long time. Here's mine - you can see the tape and the paper under one leg so it's slightly more even on the counter, LOL!



Here are my recipe steps...

* Arrange ingredients. Here's the stuff for the dough:



And the filling:



And the frosting:


* I use powdered milk to bake. I am cheap and it's easy to keep on hand. SO - for step one I get 1 cup cold water from my fridge and microwave it for 1 minute. It should be warm to the finger when you test it. I start with cold water and microwave it because it's easier for me to do the same thing every time than stand at the sink getting my arm wet trying to get the perfect temperature water, LOL!

When the water is warm I add the eggs and whisk it with a fork. Then I add the sugar, milk powder and yeast. I stir it all up and dump it all in the machine pan.




When that's in the pan I measure the flour. Today I used 2/3 white and 1/3 wheat. I love whole wheat, but I want tasty light rolls - so it's a good mix. I use bread flour and I think it makes a huge difference. So - to the wet I add the flour, followed by the salt on top and then I pour in the melted butter (which is warm but not boiling).



At this point all the dough stuff is in the pan. I set the machine to dough and turn it on. While the machine starts I clean up, put the butter for the filling on the counter and then go check the machine. This is really the only remotely tricky part of dough with a bread machine. About 5 minutes into the dough cycle I check and see if the dough is too moist or too dry. Usually mine is a little dry and requires more flour. To tell if it's too dry - it's all crumbly. To tell if it's too wet it's very sticky and under the paddles there's usually a circle of wet dough. Here are a couple of shots of dough that's too wet:






PLEASE - do not shove your fingers or anything down into the paddles. You WILL end up at the hospital. Just look - you can tell if it's too wet. If it is too wet - add flour a tablespoon or two at a time until the ball gets smoother and all the flour gets mixed in. A good looking dough ball should be smooth, not glossy but not floury and look like if you poked it it would stay for a second and then poof back out. Here are a couple of shots of good dough balls:



Now let the cycle run. It'll take 90 minutes-ish total. When the cycle is done you dough will look sort of like this:



Pull it out of the pan (it will fall) and place it on the floured counter top. You'll need to roll out the dough to about 1/4" thick and in a nice rectangle. Smear the butter on the dough:


Sprinkle the sugar on the butter, and then sprinkle the cinnamon on the sugar:




Carefully roll up the dough so it makes a long fat snake:


Now you'll need to cut up the rolls. I start by cutting the snake in half, and then in quarters. For a dozen rolls you'll need to cut each of your quarters into thirds. It makes sense when you do it. Take the rolls and set them into a greased pan. From here you can wrap and freeze them or let them rise to double and bake.

See - it really is super easy. Bread machines are fun and easy! I didn't do the frosting part with pictures - just dump everything in a bowl and beat until fluffy. Try not to eat it all before it gets on the rolls. Seriously.

For baking - I found that 10 minutes was wholly inadequate and it was more like 25 minutes for me. I covered my rolls for the first 10-15 minutes and then uncovered them so they didn't over-brown.