Best Cinnamon Rolls

It all started when I was in college.  No seriously it did.  I was on call one weekend with my friend and we couldn't be more than five minutes away from our apartment complex.  So we were hanging out on her couch bemoaning the fact that everyone else got to go out and meet cute guys and we were stuck working.  About 1am we got hungry and decided to make cinnamon rolls.  Well we didn't have any yeast, but that's what google is for.  The search "cinnamon rolls no yeast" came up with a recipe that worked and was pretty tasty.  I made this recipe a few more times and over Christmas break I made it for the family.  Like I said, it worked as a fast cinnamon roll recipe that didn't require rising over night but it wasn't amazing.  Mom liked the concept though, so when Fine Cooking had a breakfast issue come out with a recipe called "Fastest-ever Cinnamon Rolls" she thought we should try it and see if it was any better than the recipe I had googled.  Turns out this recipe is AMAZING.  The rolls are soft and there's just enough cinnamon and spices to keep it interesting and you can make it in under an hour.  So as the first post in the cooking tab I thought I'd debt this classic, enjoy :)

p.s. I went a little overboard on the pictures . . . but that's the fun of blogging right?!

Ok here are the ingredients you'll need:  buttermilk, melted butter, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, sugar, flour, salt, and ricotta (or cottage cheese, I've never liked cottage cheese because it looks gross.  The recipe calls for cottage cheese but you can substitute ricotta because this is what makes the rolls moist and they have about the same moisture content). 
 

 Add the ricotta and buttermilk.

 

The sugar (all nicely measured out into an individual bowl just like on Food Network ;)  How I survived before cable I will never know).

Then add the butter and the vanilla.

Then you mix all of the ingredients together for about 5-10 seconds until it goes from looking like the above picture . . . 

And ends up looking like this picture.

 Then dump in the flour,

The baking soda,

The salt,

Now this is a very important step that I wasn't able to take a picture of, but it needs to be done.  Throw a pinch of salt over your left shoulder BEFORE you put the salt in the mixture.  (I couldn't take a picture of this because I was holding the camera in my right salt-throwing hand).  I never used to do that, but then I saw Rachel Ray do it and I've thrown salt ever since (sorry about throwing it in your face that one time Sarah . . . you should know better than to walk behind me when I'm throwing salt though!).  I'm superstitious that way.  I could probably stop throwing salt and be just fine, but then again something awful could potentially happen sooooo I choose to be cautious and keep throwing salt.
   

Then add the baking soda (btw did you know that baking powder has baking soda in it?  weird huh)

Once all the ingredients are in the food processor, PULSE (not mix) for five pulses or until the dough has gone from liquidy to sticking together.  Yes it will be very sticky but that's OK.  Do not worry.  I wouldn't lie to you, if you don't want tough cinnamon rolls don't pulse any more.

Before you can roll out the dough you'll need to clean the counter . . . just saying.

 

 You also may need to make yourself a peanut butter and banana slice of toast for breakfast because making cinnamon rolls is a lot of work!

NOW you can dump the dough out onto a lightly floured counter and start rolling.

You need to roll the dough into a 12"x15" rectangle.  Don't worry if the edges aren't perfect.  Even I can't make them perfect and I'm a pretty amazing dough roller-outer.

Now it's time to make the filling (it seems like a ton of steps but it goes fast, trust me).  The ingredients are melted butter, brown sugar, pecans, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon.

First brush the dough with the melted butter all over (you don't need to leave an edge like some recipes will tell you, it's not going to make a difference).

Mix all of the spices and brown sugar together (I'm lazy and just eyeball a 1/4tsp cloves).

Till it looks like this!

Then spread the sugar mixture over the butter-brushed dough and sprinkle on the pecans.  You don't have to add pecans if you don't like nuts (gasp!) or if someone in your Dad's office is allergic to nuts so you make a whole batch of cinnamon rolls with no nuts just for her and SHE DOESN"T EVEN SHOW UP TO THE OFFICE THAT DAY!  Then you try not to let it affect you a month later.  Still working on that . . .

Now start rolling the 15" long edge (or make a hot dog if that's what you were taught in elementary school), and slowly roll up the dough keeping all the sugar and pecans and yumminess inside.

Then cut the log into 12 equal pieces (cut the log in half, then each of those halves in half, then cut those halves of halves into thirds), and arrange in a buttered and floured 10" cake pan.  The recipe calls for a spring form pan but ours was only a 9" and all of the rolls wouldn't fit.  So you can bake these in anything as long as it's round and 10" in diameter.  You could also bake them individually in a muffin tin if that's easier.

Then bake them in a 400 degree oven for about 25-30 minutes.  They will get semi-brown on the top so if you need to just put a piece of tin foil on the top and they will be light and pale and yummy :)

While the rolls are baking, make a glaze of water, powdered sugar, and vanilla.  Make it decently thick.  We're not going for frost-a-cake consistency, but it needs to be thick so it doesn't disappear once you drizzle it over the cinnamon rolls.

When the rolls are out of the oven they will look like this!  Wait for them to cool them drizzle the glaze and eat one of the soft, scrumptious little beautys :)

Our New Ovens!

Well, drum roll please  . . . . duhduhduhduhduhduhduhduhduduhudhduhduhduhdu

WE HAVE NEW OVENS!
As in "ovens" plural.  As in TWO.  Which is very exciting!  Just think of all the food we'll be able to cook come Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Years and birthdays and Wednesdays when the rolls need to be cooked on a different temperature than the lasagna and and and there are endless possibilities.

Before the old oven escapes completely from our minds as quickly as it was removed from the house, let's take a moment to remember fondly the horrors it made us endure:
1.  The 450 degree blast of air that burned your face as soon as you opened the oven door.
2.  The door that didn't close all the way.
3.  The way it would be set at 300 degrees and overheat to 500 degrees and shut itself off.
4.  How is would incessantly beep when it shut itself off.  Or how it would incessantly beep for no reason.  In the middle of the night.
5.  How we were worried that the incessant beeping meant that it was going to explode so we had to shut the circuit breaker off after each use and turn it back on again when we needed it next.  It's cold in the garage in the middle of winter by the way.  Almost, but not quite, cold enough to risk blowing up.
6.  Oh it was ugly, let's not forget that.

There are many more ways we hated that infernal thing but I'm done discussing it's faults.
Not surprisingly we never took any amazing pictures of the horrendous thing, but here are a few shots of us painting the walls in the kitchen that have a small view of it.

It was an oven on the bottom and a microwave on the top.  Notice the two drawers, we sadly had to lose one, but it was worth it!  Btw hi Dad!  Make sure you're safe as you climb all the way to the ceiling to paint while bracing the ladder against the fridge.

See what an amazing difference tan paint instead of pink makes to a room!?!
There's a close up of the microwave.

But they are gone!  And THIS is in their place!

Btw do you like all our tree foliage reflected in the glass doors?  We do too :)
But see how pretty these are?!  So nice and streamlined.  The one on top is a regular oven and the one on bottom is a convection oven.  I think.  I may have gotten that switched.  Well it's one way or the other at least.  We ended up choosing KitchenAid over Bosch because with Bosch we would have lost both drawers and had to bend really far down to open the bottom oven.  With this one we only lost one drawer but it's ok, we'll just put our cast iron pans somewhere else since we barely use them anyway.  Sorry Paula Deen.

Oh and did I mention it's blue inside?!  Nice touch :)

Here is our first meal cooking.  Enchiladas yum.  Yes Sarah, we made whole wheat ones for you.  Don't freak.

All warm and cheesy and no blast of heat!  I checked.  I opened the door and kept my face really close to the door (with my eyes closed just in case) and all I felt was a warm balmy breeze with thunder rolling in the background.  Not exactly the beach but hey it's as close as I'm going to get with my limited leave time this year.  More importantly, no chemical heat peel happened!

So there you have it.  The most exciting Tuesday of this year so far!  And Sarah comes home tonight so double exciting!  (I hope she doesn't feel the need to bake a cheesecake immediately at 2am, I've used up all the cream cheese so it shouldn't be a problem but I wouldn't put it past her . . . )

Garden Babies

These are my babies.  I have other ones as well but these are my baby babies.  I grew them from just seeds and now they're so big that I had to transplant them to bigger pots today.  Dad needs to hurry up and finish the garden so these can actually be planted where they belong!

These are also my babies, I rescued them from last year's garden.  Apparently tomato plants and zucchini like to grow back even when we don't plant them.  It also could have something to do with the fact that dad spread all the compost from the composter on top of the will be garden a while ago.  And he eats a lot of tomatoes.  So there were a lot of tomato seeds in the composter.

This is where I rescued the tomato babies from.  This is a renegade zucchini plant that decided to grow.  This is the biggest one but there are little ones sprouting up all over the place!  It make me feel rather silly for starting some from seed this spring and agonizing over whether they have enough water and enough sunlight and enough nutrients when they seem to grow without anyone's help in our not yet cultivated garden space.

Oh well, guess I shouldn't complain too loudly.  At least stuff is growing.

Look at the little baby zucchinis!!!  Wanna take bets on how big these will be before dad get's around to building the raised beds?!  Just kidding, he works hard all weekend long every weekend.  But still ;)

Water Heater Woes at Christmas

So I was uploading photos from my camera and found this little beauty.  This is our old water heater
See all the rust looking stuff at the bottom?  Over Christmas we had a plumber come out and inspect the whole house to see if anything was wrong.
The water heater was the first thing he checked, and I, in my recent graduatedness with a masters degree in MEP systems (the "P" standing for plumbing), was tagging along to look knowledgeable.
When he saw the water heater he got really quiet.  Then he asked if I knew what it was and I responded with "rust."  I mean what else could it be?

Well apparently it meant fire.  As in flames were shooting up out of the bottom of the water heater and going up the side.

In other words the water heater had to be replaced.  That very day.

Thankfully the flames hadn't ever reached the gas line . . . and thankfully the plumber had a new water heater on his truck ready to install that very day, and let me tell you he was spectacular at installing it!  He welded new copper pipes together and changed valves and connected everything and installed the new water heater by himself in five hours.  If you ever need a water heat replaced in NOVA let us know and we'll tell you the guy's name.

We think the flame shield in this water heater had fallen over in the earthquake and caused the flame to get lose.  But a new water heater was installed and is working just fine.  The water even heats up faster than before! (stupid previous home owners who never drained their water heater . . . ).

And yes I occasionally still go down and check that there are no flames coming out of the new one. Just in case.

So if your water heater looks like this, IT IS NOT RUST!  Call a plumber immediately!  Thank you :) 

So this is a picture from a month ago.  All the flowers were blooming and the colors looked gorgeous!  Of course they only lasted for a week and now they're all gone and the green leaves are lying on the ground in defeat.  If it were up to me I'd chop all the dead leaves off . . . but according to Dad the bulbs need the nutrients from the leaves so they can flower again next year.

I think the flowers are high maintenance.

I'm not sure they're worth keeping.

 

But then I see flowers like this and I'm not so sure I want to get rid of them just yet.  

But of course it's not MY choice what happens in the front yard, it's Dad's.  So I just have to do stuff without him knowing ;)  I'm thinking I'll plant some flower seeds at the base of the dead tulips so there's some color this summer.  I'll just say that birds planted the seeds, shhhhh don't tell!