i am going to conduct an experiment. for one entire week, i will only be allowed one hour of computer time. it can be split into parts, say half an hour in the morning, half an hour at night etc or in one whole go, or in ten minute intervals, or whatever.can be sure i won't be spending endless hours facebooking or blogging haha. there are always more important things to check on the internet.
anyways.
i woke up this morning to the smell of glorious cinnamon. i had a lovely dream in the night (along the lines of meeting the most wonderful guy of my dreams, who ah-hem, has two...uhuh, THREE dimples, sweet grey eyes, the most beautiful SHARP nose and is as asian as an asian can be...) (hmm, i don't suppose such a guy exists) and he was going to give some wonderful gift (for he was generous as well, whaddya know...) and then i woke up, thinking the gift was cinnamon rolls and uh...and then i woke up.
hmm, tiger balm smells like cinnamon rolls, honest. at least, the little red one contains cinnamon oil. sigh. so much for romance. tiger balm isn't very romantic.oh drats. so to cut a long story short, i made cinnamon rolls today. they didn't turn out as fat and pretty as the pics i saw online (i will get fat surfing the internet, hence the one hour experiment) but they are okay and one cannot go wrong with cinnamon and brown sugar. and butter.
how to make cinnamon buns with pictures (taken completely off cooking life, ingredients are there)
(i think i enjoy taking pictures more than cooking/baking, i think i mentioned this before)
the joy of using american butter in an american recipe is that the measurements are all there. i prefer american recipes. it's so simple. it's like one cup of this and quarter cup of that and everything just agak-agak using a single measuring cup and no nilly willy with the weighing machine.
take three T butter and heat with 1 cup milk to just warm
mix the heated butter+milk with 1 cup flour, 1 egg, 1/2 cup sugar, 2.5 T rapid rise yeast, 1 t salt
i am convinced our yeast died last week. or something. i had to wait four hours before the dough rose to some convincing level. the recipe calls for two.
so you stir up the mixture and add the remaining 2.5 cups of flour and you get sticky dough. you add more flour and knead it about for about 8 min and then ball it up and throw it into a lightly greased bowl. this is how my dough looked. i think it is not good. cover the bowl with cling wrap and a kitchen cloth and leave it for two hours (or so the recipe says)
this is how my dough looked after four hours. forgive the finger marks. my sis says that if you poke it and it doesn't bounce back, the dough is ready. i don't argue with her. she's a baking expert.
prepare the filling! this is the lovely part. you mix two T ground cinammon with 3/4 cup brown sugar, and you get cinnamon sugar! knead out your dough on a floured surface and roll it into a 15inchby11inch rectangle. spread 1/4 cup butter on the rectangle leaving 1/2 inch at the sides unbuttered. spread cinnamon sugar over the butter. roll from the long side and cut the rolls slightly less than an inch in width.
put them in a lined and greased baking tin. makes about 16. leave it for 45 min to pouf out some more. i was lazy so i left it for 45 min (when the yeast was SO OBVIOUSLY DEAD) and so my rolls didn't really pouf out but nyways it was the cinnamon i was after.
put it in the oven at 180C for about 15 min.
and this be how you eat it!notice hor, notice hor, i left out the cream cheese glaze. i did i did. i am going to become very unhealthy if i keep on visiting food blogs. argh.
