Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Pioneer Swirlies

Here's part two in the three part series of cooking Pioneer Woman's recipes...which all happened recently on a weekend where we were snowed in and I had the serious itch to cook up some new stuff.

This past summer Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond had a post where she and her friend cooked up a massive batch of cinnamon rolls. I have to admit, the frosting (more of a maple than cream cheese frosting) wasn't a real turn on for me, plus her batches all looked like little mini cinnamon rolls in those shallow disposable cake pans. Now I am NOT knocking Pioneer Woman - the girl knows her stuff! But there was just enough going on in this recipe that I guess I wasn't tempted to make it right away.

And then recently her buddy, the tattooed, pierced and hot Pastor Ryan, made up a batch with some of his church buddies... Ok, what's going on? I'm started to get tempted to make up a batch myself!

And less than a month later, Finny was posting about making the same stuff! And her's looked goooooood! Sure, still smaller than I like my cinnamon rolls, but she got all crazy and ditched the frosting part of the recipe, and used her ONLY secret topping - aka what I call "tub o' frosting"!!!

Ok, time for me to jump on board!!

I found this recipe to be very interesting for a yeast-risen dough. Like you start with yeast, but after a period of rising, you add MORE flour (not too crazy), PLUS baking soda AND baking powder (ok, now that's just nutso!). What's the purpose for this? I honestly have no idea, but I followed through...

What I'm ESPECIALLY grateful for is Finny's posting of a couple (ha!), um, "mishaps" (ha ha!) that she experienced when making the dough. Like it makes A LOT of dough... And that made me a bit paranoid! Luckily I've recently been using these massive tubs we bought awhile back for kitchen stuff... Even so, I was worried. Would this big tub be big enough for what could possibly turn into a yeast-monster!??! (Again, see what happened to Finny)


Ok, now I feel better.


Hm, after the initial rising time, I was almost disappointed!!! Not only did my dough not flow all over the place, it didn't even pop the top! Oh well - better safe than sorry! (And, man, check out them air bubbles!)


So it was finally time to pat out the dough...


...and then cover it in melted butter, cinnamon and sugar. And trust me, there was no measuring going on here!


What, you think I made up the entire batch of cinnamon rolls? Ha ha!!! Look what went into the freezer!


Yup, we've got more goodness in our future!

Anyhow, once the dough was slathered with goodness, it was rolled up, sliced about at about 1 inch intervals (nothing too small!!!), tucked into the pans, and allowed to rise...


Yummmmmm!


Unfortunately there's no pictures of the completed product. I forgot. I was distracted. I was making myself sick on sticky sweet cinnamony goodness covered in...well, let's be honest, shall we? (Whatever you do, DON'T read the ingredients!)

I polished off one pan here over a week, and the other pan went into work and was gone by noon. All I know is Julie came into my office screaming "they're all gone and I didn't get any!" before slamming the empty pan on my desk! LOL Hey - she knew they were there! I took her one from the pan I had at home, but by then it was a few days old and didn't have that "just baked fresh" feeling to it. Better luck next time!

4 comments:

Mary said...

Dude, you do not want the Gedeon after you! Get her a cinnamon roll, stat!

Jeph said...

LOL I made it up to her the next day...

FinnyKnits said...

What? No dough-spolsion in your kitchen? Boo.

But they look really F'n good and I'm glad someone else is out there WT-ing it up with canned frosting.

Good stuff!

Jeph said...

Nope, no e'splosion - I was a bit disappointed!

But that's ok, 'cause I about had the explosion with the icing for the prune cake, since my pot was too small. No one warned me that it was going to "bloom" into something much much bigger!