This passed Sunday was a great day. Woke to a very light dusting of snow – and I do man VERY light – but it was enough to give me the baking bug! So after a relaxing morning of coffee and picking up around the house, I grabbed a couple of cookbooks and dug in. While grocery shopping on Saturday, I’d anticipated the ‘Homey-Sunday’, so I bought some yeast in the hopes of tackling homemade cinnamon rolls! I hadn’t made them since high school, and like my previous post of making a really good, flaky pie crust, there is a certain level of scariness to making yeast products. But, I figured, what was the worst that could happen? The dough wouldn’t rise and I’d have flat rolls…I was willing to take the risk. The mixing was easy – and a thermometer I always forget I have allowed me to make sure my warm water wasn’t too hot or too cool to active (or not) the yeast. I covered the dough with a towel and let it rise on top of our clothes dryer that was going ALL day long (we got a ton of laundry done yesterday!) I made a to-die-for cream cheese frosting for the rolls as prefer it to a regular glaze. We had the rolls for dessert after a wonderful Sunday dinner of pot roast, green beans with onions and bacon and mashed potatoes. And as heavenly as they were…I was actually able to limit myself to one! THAT was the miracle of the day!
Above is the full pan – baked in my Pampered Chef stoneware 9x13 pan. It bakes really well…tender edges…not hard and crunchy. Here’s a close-up of the warm, sweet, soft, heavenly treat. Mmmmmmm……
While the cinnamon roll dough was rising for the first time atop the dryer, I noticed several bananas going to waste in the fruit bowl. We eat a LOT of bananas in our house, but as hard as you try to not let it happen, a couple go to waste by the end of each week. While I normally toss the aged-spotted nanners – and it kills me to do so because I KNOW I’ll just be buying more the very next day – yesterday…since I as in a baking mood anyway, I made some banana bread. Two caramel-colored loaves baked up in my stoneware loaf pans and I froze one after it cooled to take on an upcoming camping trip over Spring Break. The other…it’ll happily grace our lunch boxes and breakfast plates throughout the week. Lucky for our tummies!! Here’s the moist and flavorful banana bread. Such a nice sweet to have around the house from time to time…I’m not posting recipes for the cinnamon rolls or banana bread. The cinnamon rolls and banana bread came from my Betty Crocker cookbook – a pretty standard manual in most kitchens. But the cream cheese icing was from a Pillsbury cookbook that has come in handy for me many times. The frosting was so killer - and easy – I just have to share.
Cream Cheese Icing -
3 cups powdered sugar
1 8oz. brick cream cheese – softened
2 T. butter
1 t. vanilla
Mix all ingredients together in stand mixer or with hand mixer until light and fluffy – about 5 minutes. That’s it! EASY!!
Sunday was truly a SWEET day!!!
2 comments:
Yeast is a scary beast! Ryan has been taking cooking classes though and we made his pizza dough the other night from his class and we didn't have any problems! I think the key was that he didn't know the yeast is scary so he just did what the instructions said. I love the frosting recipe, I will definitely be using that one!
Good for Ryan! Cooking is so fun - just gotta conquer the fear of the scary ingredients, eh? And DO use that frosting...it is KILLER.
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