Birthday and Challenge Combo

This month's challenge happened to land on Matt's birthday. I knew I'd tie them together somehow. One of our favorite things to have on the weekends are cinnamon rolls so I said to myself "self, make Matt homemade cinny rolls this time". And so I did. This was challenging for me b/c while I bake quite often, it is almost never dealing with dough (besides cookums dough). I remember my mother giving many attempts at homemade bread and it never coming out the way she wanted...(although slathered with butter i didn't care!). Maybe that's why I don't try it more often?? the rising, the waiting, blah blah blah....

I found a basic cinny roll recipe for the dough portion. And I apologize, but I'm not going to type out all that right now. I'm beat from gardening all day and am becoming blurry eyed! Anywhoozer....so I'm doing the dough and it occurs to me...I can really do this. Everything came together too easily. And I loved loved loved rolling it out with my pin.

Ok, so after I rolled out the sweet dough I took a generous amount of brown sugar, cinnamon, and a few grates of fresh nutmeg and cut in cold in butter. That little delicious mixture was spread over the dough and then I rolled it up and cut it. They baked for about 20 minutes...and oh my. The fragrance that filled the house.....la sigh....

The icing was a simple mixture of cream cheese, mascarpone cheese (cause i'm italian like giada), powdered sugar, and a splash of vanilla. i didn't use exact measurements. i threw it in bowl, whipped it up, tasted, and then added if neccessary. if matt weren't always on to me i'd be standing in front of the fridge now eating the remainder of the icing from the bowl.

Good call on this month's challenge idea....I really enjoyed it and now I'm over my fear of doughs ;) And I'd like to give props to my stand mixer with the dough hook. Holla!

Until next time, fellow doorknobs, keep those buns and ovens hot!