Cinnamon Rolls and Cribbage

This morning I woke up with a serious craving for homemade cinnamon rolls. Don't get me wrong; I've never made cinnamon rolls from scratch. But I figured it couldn't be that hard. After some research, I learned that, yes, in fact, it can be that hard. Julia Child's had some ideas, but they would have taken me almost three hours to make. So I turned to the almighty Internet to find a simple looking recipe that specifically stated it would only take 90 minutes!

Cinnamon-Pecan Rolls (Recipe altered from Ninety-Minute Cinnamon Rolls on Allrecipes.com)

Serves 12 (or 6, if you're like us and eat two at a time)

• 3/4 cup milk
• 1/4 cup butter
• 3 1/4 cups whole-wheat flour
• 1 package yeast (the original recipe calls for "instant" - I used regular)
• 1/4 cup organic sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup water (plus more) 
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup packed organic brown sugar
• 1 heaping tablespoon cinnamon
• 1/4 cup butter, melted
• 1/3 cup chopped pecans (optional, but awesome)

Heat the milk in a small saucepan, then add the 1/4 cup butter and allow it to melt with the milk. Remove from heat and set aside.

In a large bowl, combine 3 cups of the flour, the yeast, sugar, and salt. Beat in the water, egg, and milk mixture until well combined. Stir in the extra 1/4 cup of flour. At this point, I had to alternate adding a teaspoon of water and then flour in order to get the right consistency. Knead the dough about 25 times until smooth; form into a round loaf and cover with a damp towel for ten minutes.

In a small bowl, combine the brown sugar, cinnamon, and melted butter. When the dough is ready, roll it out to a rectangle, around 12x9 inches. Spread the brown sugar mixture evenly over the whole thing, then sprinkle with the chopped pecans if desired. Roll the whole thing up (the original recipe didn't specify which way to roll, so I rolled it to be longer), then cut into 12 pieces. Place each piece in a greased muffin pan.

The recipe called for 30 minutes to allow the rolls to rise, but after 30 minutes my rolls hadn't risen at all. I'm not positive, but I think I could have skipped this step. Then bake at 375 degrees for 15-18 minutes (I like my rolls super gooey, so I would have been happier at 15, I think, but 18 worked well). The rolls are done when they smell incredible and look something like this:

Homemade cinnamon rolls make the house smell fantastic!

(Don't be fooled. We each ate two.)

Breakfast of champions!

Yum yum yum! Terry's words were, "Who needs Cinnabon?" (I don't think these rolls were as gooey and melt-in-your-mouth as Cinnabon, but I certainly felt less guilty eating them!) They definitely hit the spot and satisfied my sweet tooth!

After breakfast, we enjoyed some time at the farmers' market for our weekly vegetables. Our big score was that we're finally able to enjoy the tamales sold at the market near us. We tried them about two months ago, before our challenge, and they were among the best tamales we've ever had. They sell by the dozen, so today we went for it and now have several tamales in our freezer for a fast dinner whenever we want. We ate some for lunch today and plan to have more tomorrow night. Perhaps I'll wait to devour it until after I take a few pictures?

And eventually I got up the energy to go for a run. Yesterday's focus was distance, and today's was speed. I wanted to run each mile in nine minutes or less, so Terry calculated that we needed to keep a pace of 6.67 miles/hour. Our usual pace is around 6.5 to 6.7 miles per hour, so we would have been fine, but for some reason we hauled butt and kept a 7 mi/hr pace! According to Terry's MyTracks app, we did three miles in 25 minutes! Definitely a record for me, and we were feeling great at the end (the during part was a different story). This afternoon included a Cribbage tournament (when I suggested it, Terry thought I said "Quidditch tournament," which would have been way better) and Love Actually. Terry won, so now I have to do the vacuuming.