My 30th birthday is a little over 4 months away and there are quite a few items left on my 30 by 30 list, yup – quite a few. So when my sister asked me to make something a little special (read: indulgent) for brunch this past Sunday (I’m staying with her while in NY), I decided it was time to cross one thing off the list – cinnamon buns (or cinnamon rolls – is there a difference??)
Now before you remind me about my goals of losing a few pounds this year, let me assure you – I’m well aware of this goal. And in case I somehow forgot, my jeans very clearly (although passive aggressively) set the record straight by bursting at the seems. No, I’m not using this expression metaphorically. Literally, I looked down at my jeans yesterday while my sister was in a dressing room trying on wedding dress #3785643, and along both sides of the pant legs, I saw seems. Holding on for their dear life. No bueno.
Needless to say I went with a lighter recipe for brunch (from Cook’s Illustrated The Best Light Recipe
Yet somehow this recipe was a fail.
The dough was crazy sticky (I added a lot of flour in an attempt to remedy that); the technique of patting it down (instead of rolling it out) into a rectangle was quite strange (they said it’d be easier but nope, quite awkward in fact) and then finally when I started forming the cinnamon roll, the dough started ripping in so many places – spewing out cinnamon sugar like crazy (you may notice patches in the below picture).
I was not a happy camper. Not at all. But at the end, decided to just plop a bunch of dough and cinnamon sugar blobs into the pan and see what happens.
Cinnamon bun dough blobs 
This is what happened ~25 minutes later. Hey, not bad!
Getting these babies out of the pan was no easy task (since I basically poured sugar over the dough, it stuck to the bottom of the pan once melted)… but I persevered.
These were “quick” cinnamon buns, meaning the dough was not yeasted. Instead they were biscuit-like buns with a sweet cinnamon filling and a cream cheese/buttermilk glaze. I won’t be making this recipe again but they were quite tasty at the end.
Have you ever made cinnamon buns (or rolls)? Do you have a favorite lighter recipe? And just for fun… what’s your favorite brunch food? Mine is French toast and this crème brulee baked French toast (which incidentally I made last time I was staying at my sister’s in NY) is my favorite recipe of all times!
(it’s $300!!). The good news is that some gadgets are AWESOME… even if you can in fact use something simpler to get the job done. 
that Amazon recommends with it… I do have my limits). And I recently purchased this 
).
[I also spy my Bloody Mary there. It was solid.]
