When the world gets you down...

...I say "screw it".


Mmmm...and what a tasty jellyroll corkscrew coil that is gonna be!

Ever since we got back from Chicago I've been fantasizing about those Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, and a day home sick, needing some comfort food, and more than 12-hours of sleep definitely gave me the energy and desire to try whipping up a batch from the recipe I found online. (And, yes, I know - I'm behind on posting the rest of the Chicago pics) Now I don't know if this is really truly THE recipe they use at Ann Sather (scaled down for home baking), but either way, I've got noooo complaints!

I DID have to add more flour than the recipec alled for, and to make life easier for myself (remember: sick and not feeling well), I mixed the room temp butter, cinnamon and brown sugar into a paste to spread on the dough, rather than spread on one, then sprinkle the other two. I always get OCD when I do that, worrying that I'm not distributing each component evenly enough. So hey, make a schmear, and it works great!

And the recipe didn't specify light or dark brown sugar, so I went half-and-half. Tastes great!


I honestly worried there wasn't going to be enough "schmear" to cover both 12"x8" pieces of rolled out dough, but it turned out perfect. And while I honestly didn't measure out the dough (who does that!?), I was pretty confident I'd gone AT LEAST 12" BY 8", and yet I still couldn't get nine 2" coils of raw dough + schmear out of the recipe. Mine were more like 1" to 1 1/2". Oh well - shorter than those in the restaurant, sure, but really tasty!

I'm about out of the Vietnamese ground cinnamon I got two years ago from Urban Herbs at the Fabulous Food Show in Cleveland, but still have a little of the Chinese ground cinnamon (and a bunch of "just regular" ground cinnamon) - so I went with the Chinese variety. I never thought I'd notice a difference in varieties of *cinnamon*, but wow, the Vietnamese stuff is goooood! (And, interestingly enough, I see they no long offer the Vietnamese variety on the Urban Herbs site - bummer!)


Interesting notes about this recipe... Instead of flouring the board and rolling out the dough on it, you use a lightly greased (eh hm, Pam'd) board to roll out the dough. This seems to help prevent that dry, floury exterior on the resulting cinnamon rolls. AND the recipe called for putting the raw spirals on a greased sheet pan (that's all, no more detail than that - like how far apart or anything...) Ok, that's weird. I always thought cinnamon rolls went in a baking pan with higher sides - like for support or something, and maybe so the edges didn't dry out? Oh well - worth a shot. Here you'll see I used parchment paper instead of greasing the pan - I HATE washing dishes if I don't have to...and the dishwasher that came with this house isn't quite spaced for sheet pans.


Heeeeere we go - I wonder how they'll be!?


Mmmm mmm good!


Confession time: I had two after dinner last nite (and one of those single-serving sizes of Ben & Jerry's chocolate fudge brownie ice cream - hey, I'm sick, get off my back! I'm LOSING weight while sick this week anyhow!). And then I packaged up a bunch, intending to take them to work this morning, only feeling worse than yesterday morning, so I stayed home. And then I ate two after lunch. And am sure I'll have more for dessert.

Just remember - they're SHORT! So it's ok! ;-)