When I rolled over in bed this morning and offered Nick the choice between gingerbread pancakes and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, I was not anticipating any problems. I just had a yen to do some baking on a beautiful, sunny, crisp fall day. Yesterday I made a pumpkin pie. I’m in baking overdrive.
He chose cinnamon rolls. Yum.
While I love yeast dough rolls, the kind my mother made for Christmas morning, if it’s actually morning and I’m just pulling out the bowls, I go for quick rolls, made with biscuit dough. Cook’s Illustrated has a terrific recipe for Quick Cinnamon Rolls with Buttermilk Icing. I made it with my delightful young nephews last Thanksgiving – so we’re not talking difficult here.
Apparently, sometimes I get cocky, and I need to be reminded that baking is an adventure every time. Failure is a possibility.
I melted the butter, greased the pan, mixed the sugars and spices for the topping, put the cream cheese to soften, and stirred a squirt of fresh lemon juice into the regular milk, a classic substitute for buttermilk in baking. Was this where I went wrong? I don’t know – but I’ve used this trick many times before with no ill effect.
I mixed up the flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt. Added the faux-buttermilk and melted butter (this is not a recipe for the butter-phobic). Stirred. The recipe said the dough would be shaggy, but that I should turn it onto a lightly floured counter and knead until smooth.
This dough was definitely shaggy. It could even be described as sticky. I eyed it suspiciously, then decided to trust in the recipe (Cook’s Illustrated recipes always work! They may be a pain, but they work!). And I’d made this recipe before, with spectacular results. Surely it would all turn out okay.
Still, rather than lightly flouring the counter, I dumped a little pile of flour down before adding the nearly liquid dough. When I tried to knead, all I got for my trouble was hands covered in clinging goo. My ring disappeared under dough. I pried it off my finger and set it aside to clean later.
I added more flour, tried to knead it in. Still sticky. More flour. Finally my nerve broke. I had added so much flour already, and I didn’t want a dry, flavorless dough. After all, remember, the dough was supposed to be shaggy. Sure after the knead, it was supposed to be smooth, but I conveniently ignored that inconvenient descriptor.
I patted the dough into a rectangle. Brushed it with melted butter, spread it with an astounding layer of sugar and spice. Then I was supposed to roll it up into a long cylinder before slicing it into rolls.
There was no way this was going to happen. I tried to roll. It tore. It bled sugar. The dough had no structural integrity, and it was no far too late to knead in any more flour. I was screwed.
I almost gave up. But no. I’m stubborn, and this had taken time, effort, and ingredients. Plus, Nick had asked for cinnamon rolls! I couldn’t disappoint.
Instead, I improvised. Using a spatula, I managed to heap the dough so that the cinnamon filling was inside, encased by dough. It wouldn’t be anything like a perfect spiral within, but it had some sort of shape. Discarding the rough cake pan, I lined a sheet pan with foil and buttered that. Now to get the cinnamon log from the counter onto the pan. I cut it into three chunks, each the width of the spatula, and scooped each one onto the pan with minimal loss of filling.
At this point, the cinnamon rolls were supposed to be brushed with still more melted butter. I had the butter and the brush, so I buttered my shapeless hunks of cinnamon and dough, and then shoved them in the oven.
Surely, these three large cakes would take longer to bake than eight little rolls. I set the timer for the maximum suggested baking time for the rolls, and figured I’d see how it was doing by then. A cup of coffee and some light reading seemed indicated.
I was roused from my coffee by the smell of burning. My neighbors, not to mention my husband, would not thank me if they were woken at 9 on Saturday morning by the fire alarm. I turned the fan on high and yanked the pan out of the oven.
A burned, bubbling mass of sugar spread over the pan, surrounding the browned humps. I laughed. I had to. This was, by far, my most spectacular baking fail ever. It was clearly inedible – raw on the inside and burned outside, the sugar and butter spilled and smoking.
I turned the oven off. Once the pan had cooled enough to hold, I would just scrape it all into the garbage. We could still have pumpkin pie for breakfast. Or maybe I’d go out for some of those amazing croissants from the French bakery.
Then minutes later, curiosity won out. I put my coffee down again. After all, the timer had been nearly to zero when I saved us from the fire alarm. Maybe they were cooked through. Maybe they were even edible.
I pulled off a bit of dough and ate it. The burned sugar that clung to the edge tasted terrible. I cut another piece, this one without burn attached. It actually tasted pretty good.
Okay. I trimmed the cinnamon logs, cutting away the burned sugar edges, and put the new pieces on a wire rack. I’d already mixed up the cream cheese icing while they were in the oven, so I iced the logs. They actually didn’t look that bad, if you thought of them as rustic and charming, and didn’t think about cinnamon rolls. Cinnamon cakes with cream cheese glaze. Sure, that’s the ticket.
They taste good. I honestly can’t believe it. I really thought this project was a total goner, and instead, it’s yummy. Not exactly what I expected, but I can live with that.
Was it the buttermilk? Did I mis-count and add too little flour by some huge amount? I have no idea. But I’m very pleased to have fresh cinnamon cakes for breakfast.
The true moral of this story? Always line a baking sheet with foil. Rather than soaking and scraping the burned sugar off that pan for 3 days, I slid some very messy foil into the garbage, and cleanup was done. See, I do learn from my mistakes.
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