Diaries From the Dirt Road: Cinnamon Rolls

If you haven't noticed, from some of my previous posts, that I love to cook! I grew up learning how to cook mostly from my mom. I am so lucky to have learned from her how to cook because so many people I know don't even know how to make the simplest things and that just baffles me! I love going through cookbooks, magazines, recipe websites, and now Pinterest to find new and exciting recipes. So what I would like to start doing is to post a recipe every Monday to share with everyone. I will share some of my personal favorites for you to try and I hope you enjoy them!

The first recipe that I'm going to share with you is a cinnamon roll recipe that my mom has made for years that is truly amazing. A few weeks ago I decided one morning that I was going to try and make them. While I was making them I snapped a few pictures of the process along the way.

Cinnamon Rolls:

Ingredients:

Roll-
6 1/2 oz Milk 80-90 degrees (3/4 cups + 1 tbsp.)
1 Large Egg
3 cups Bread flour - Don't use any thing but bread flour!
3 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tspn. salt
4 tbsp. butter or margarine
2 tbsp. active dry yeast or 1 1/2 tspn. bread machine/fast rise yeast

Filling-
1/3 cup butter or margarine softened
1/3 cup sugar (I used brown sugar and it turned out fine)
2 tspn cinnamon (or just sprinkle on however much you want or that covers surface)

Icing-
1 cup powdered sugar
1-2 tablespoons Milk
1/2 tspn vanilla
1/2 tspn almond extract

Directions- ***The dough recipe is for a bread machine***

1. Add warm milk and egg to pan.
2. Add bread flour, 3 tablespoons sugar and salt to pan. Tap pan to settle dry ingredients, then level ingredients pushing some of the mixture into corners. Place butter in to corners of pan.
3. Make a well in the center of dry ingredients; add yeast. Lock pan into bread machine.

4.Program your bread machine for "Dough". Start bread maker. When done, remove pan from machine. Place dough on floured surface. Knead dough about 1 minute, then let rest 15 minutes.

(Still in Pan)

5. Roll dough into a rectangle about 15x10 inches. Spread 1 1/3 cup softened butter over dough to within 1 inch of edges. Then sprinkle 1/3 cup sugar and the cinnamon evenly over dough.

6. Roll dough up into a 12 inch long, evenly shaped roll. With a knife cut roll into 1 inch pieces. The way I did it was cut it in half then each of the halves cut into half again and then cut each of the 4 pieces into 3 1 inch pieces.