Avid Baker's Challenge: Glazed Cinnamon Rolls

This month's Avid Baker's Challenge club are the delicious Glazed Cinnamon Rolls on page 334 of The Weekend Baker by Abby Dodge.
Last May, the ABCers made Overnight Cinnamon Buns and I was curious to see how these compared to those wonderfully light and tasty buns.

Overall, each recipe had pros and cons so if I make cinnamon buns again I will try to do a combination of the two and (hopefully!) wind up with THE perfect cinnamon bun.

So, what did I like about these Glazed Cinnamon Rolls? The pros for me were: they were quick and easy to make and the finished dough was so well behaved and easy to roll out. It was soft and manageable and rolled out without even needing any extra flour. I rolled it out between pieces of wax paper, but I don't think I even needed to do that. [My biggest con for the Overnight Cinnamon Buns is that the dough was very sticky and hard to roll out (although I made them in May vs January so the weather may have played a big part there).] The flavor of the cinnamon filling was also quite nice and didn't get absorbed into the dough, which I like.

The cons were that I thought the dough itself was a little bland vs the other cinnamon rolls, which contained orange zest. I did add some nuts to try to create a sort of a nutty-caramelized topping (in the bottom of the pan) and had mixed results with that...disappointing. I was going for something similar to Baking with Julia's Pecan Sticky Buns, but most of my cookbooks are in storage so I just guessed at the ingredients for that and was so way off in terms of how much butter to put in the pan that it's not surprising mine didn't caramelize. Julia's recipe calls for 1 STICK of butter (O.M.G.) to be spread into a 9" pan...I only used about one tablespoon in a 6" pan. So, obviously, mine did not caramelize like the dreamy pictures in Baking with Julia. As much as I love butter, that is a lot of butter! Although...in the big picture, I guess it's only about 1 T per serving so maybe I can convince myself to go through with Julia's method someday!

Anyway, back to these Glazed Cinnamon Rolls. Next time I will add some lemon or orange zest to the dough to jazz it up a bit and also add some nuts to the filling. Here are my pictures.

mise en place for the dough

my well-behaved dough is set aside to rise

ready!

mise en place for the filling

I added some nutmeg as well as cinnamon

I like to mix the butter to the filling because it makes the mixture easier to spread and
it sticks to the dough better than a granulated topping when you start rolling

this dough was a breeze to roll out

my butter-sugar mixture is added

and spread over the dough

and then we roll...

almost there!

I like to use plain dental floss to slice my buns. It slices perfectly
without putting pressure on - and distorting - the dough

look how beautifully this dough slices!

I baked some in a plan dish, as the recipe instructed

and some with sugar, cinnamon and nuts in the bottom of the pan

after the second rise they are ready for the oven now

these were a bit over-done

smells delicious

my non-caramelized topping

they were best right out of the over while still warm

Bye for now...