Wonderful start to the day: Semi homemade cinnamon buns

One of the things I love is a hot cinnamon rolls. No ordinary grocery store boxed bun will do. It must be big, gooey and warm to make me dive in. This is surprisingly a hard find. Thus I absolutely indulge when the opportunity presents itself.

The bakery I worked at in high school made cinnamon rolls on Fridays and Saturdays like clock work. I know how to make them. I just never felt up to the effort first thing in the morning. Plus knowing myself, I knew that one batch would probably be finished off come 10am, not something I want to advertise. I simply just never put myself in that position.

However, after yet another week of travel for work, I need a gift for me. No I was not going to wake up at 5am to start the yeast dough, but I figured pizza dough would certainly work. So here we go, the recipe for semi homemade cinnamon buns that take no more than 10 minutes to prep and another 15 minutes to cook.

Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:
Pre-made pizza dough
3 tbsp butter
3tbsp cinnamon
1 cup sugar

Heat oven to 350 degrees

1. Melt butter in microwave.


2. Mix cinnamon and sugar till well combined in separate bowl.


3. On a well floured counter roll out pizza dough till 1/4 inch thick. Try as best as possible to keep in a nice rectangle. It should come out to be about 24 inches long by 12 inches high


4. With a pastry brush spread melted butter on dough.


5. Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar mixture evenly across dough. There should be a noticeable layer coating the butter.
   

5. Roll the dough up as if you were making a snake. Do this as tight as possible.

6. Cut roll into 1 inch pieces.
7. Place cinnamon rolls in greased pan and place in preheated oven.

Now the hard part begins. You have to wait at least 15 minutes for them to finish cooking. About 5 minutes into cooking time the yummy and insatiable smell of cinnamon and sugar and butter will start to take over the kitchen.

I made them extra indulgent by mixing some powdered sugar with milk as an icing. It ended up being one good Saturday morning.