Cinnamon rolls

Last Sunday we had our Young Adults meeting at church. We meet after the 11 am Mass, so everyone's usually pretty hungry! I figured I'd make cinnamon rolls as a special Easter treat using my basic bread dough. 

After punching down the dough, roll it out into a large rectangle. A squarer rectangle will create fatter rolls, but less of them, where as a very wide but short rectangle will make more rolls but they'll be a little thinner. In this case, I figured it'd be better to make smaller rolls so that everyone could have one, so I tried to make my dough as wide as possible. The dough should be pretty thin, about 1/4 of an inch. 

Top with melted butter, cinnamon, and brown sugar, then roll it up! It will be messy, especially if the plumber stops by right during this step and needs to get access to the kitchen sink, which is about 6 inches away from where you're rolling out the dough. Be grateful you at least got a picture first. 

I think cinnamon rolls taste best when they're all squished together as they bake. But putting alll the rolls in there would've been a little bit too squishy, so I also experimented with baking individual rolls in a muffin pan. The verdict? Squishy is indeed better. (Although I probably overbaked the ones in the muffin tin.)

Frost with a nice thick glaze of powdered sugar and milk, with some extra special flavorings recommended by the Pioneer Woman: coffee, vanilla, and maple. Dooooo it. 

I brought 20 rolls to the young adult meeting and they were all gobbled up by the time the talk started, so I think that counts as a success!

Jessica's Cinnamon Rolls
1/2 recipe Basic Bread Dough or any white bread dough

1/3 cup salted butter, melted
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon

Preheat oven to 425.
Roll out bread dough into a rectangle, approximately 18" by 12".  Spread melted butter on the dough, being careful to get all the way to the edges on each side. Mix together the brown sugar and cinnamon and sprinkle it over the dough, again being careful to get it all the way to the sides. (Otherwise the rolls on the end won't have much flavor!) Roll the dough up, starting in the middle and working out to the ends with each revolution.

Use a serrated knife to cut the dough log into rolls about 1inch tall (I think mine were a little less). Place into a greased pan or muffin tin.

Bake for about 25 minutes (20 minutes or less for rolls in muffin pans) or until light golden brown.

Maple-Coffee Glaze

Adopted from The Pioneer Woman

2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup strong coffee
2 tbsp maple syrup

Mix together and drizzle over rolls. This works best when the rolls are warm!