My Little Helper & Me Made Cinnamon Rolls

Cinnamon rolls

We love cinnamon rolls, back in Budapest, we used to order Starbucks menus for the cinnamon rolls, haha. They had this ongoing promotion where the menu was quite affordable and we had so little time that it was convenient. I promised my daughter we'd try to make our own cinnamon rolls back then, but the emigration took so much of my time that I really didn't want to take up another task in the kitchen to prep something for the first time. I just stuck to my usual habits mostly and didn't want to try new things that could horribly fail if not done well. I don't fancy kneading dough as my hands have issues doing so long enough and I didn't have a stand mixer there so I skipped this task.

Delayed in keeping my promise

I never intended to not stick to my promise, so when my boyfriend and daughter gave me a stand mixer for Christmas, I knew I had to fulfill this promise soon. I tried to make it easier on myself by buying a "DIY cinnamon roll" package from a Dutch store so that I didn't have to gather the ingredients myself, lol. It was on sale so it was justified at the time. A few months ago, I decided to surprise her and ask her for help.

Step by step

The instructions were easy to follow as they were written on the box and I made sure the dough was ready when she arrived back from school to do her part of helping.

I asked her to do the rolling of the dough so I didn't have to do that. At these moments I'm so happy that we have this big glass dining table. I don't like how it looks at all, but for baking purposes and cleaning purposes, it's so much better than having a wooden table. This one can get very messy without causing the table to be damaged afterward, very handy! I just throw a pile of flour on it knowing I can clean up the remains very easily when we're done.

Once the dough had the right size more or less, my daughter added the mix of butter, brown sugar, and of course cinnamon.

Time to roll it all up!

I taught her how to divide the roll into 8 parts by showing we first take the middle, then the middle of the middle, and then divide them into two more parts each to get to 8.

I cut them, as you can see I'm not that great at this task yet, they all look different, lol.

I flattened them and covered the baking tray with foil to rise once more.

As you can see they are a lot bigger after the final rise.

Aaaaaand, I left them in the oven a bit too long so it seems, oops! They look absolutely burned and I felt they were just right to throw in a window, haha. Oh my gosh, why did I mess up the final part? Well, easy, the baking time simply wasn't sufficient with our oven so I had to adjust myself and hope for the best. This time the best was not good enough.

They tasted fine though

I forgot to mention that I added powdered sugar with water to the rolls and let them cool so you have this crunchy topping of sugar. I love that part!

I didn't want to eat them at first and was disappointed but my boyfriend tried them and said they taste very nice even though they should be softer. Thankfully, he approved and he meant it as well, haha. For a moment I figured he was just being polite, but my daughter approved as well the next day.

On the next try, I will make them from scratch myself and try to follow my gut feeling in terms of the oven, haha. I hope that in the next round, I can show you perfectly-looking cinnamon rolls!

Do you like cinnamon rolls? Do you ever make them, any tips?