I was thinking about using my sourdough starter to make dinner rolls last night, but I didn’t get it started in time – isn’t that the usual problem with starter bread? While I was looking at recipes though, cinnamon rolls kept showing up alongside the dinner rolls in google. I love google, it is where I turn for inspiration for just about everything.

The recipe I found was for a bread machine – which I refuse to use – so I have modified it for those of us who are making things by hand.

So now I had the rolls, but I don’t like the old powdered sugar & water frosting. Cinnamon rolls (like carrot cake) needs to have cream cheese frosting or caramel. Or both. Back to google I went this morning. What I found borders on the divine.

Next time you have an evening to pre-plan for breakfast, or you just want to spoil your family, this is a great recipe!

For the rolls:

• 1 cup sourdough starter – room temp.
• 3/4 cup warm milk
• 2 tablespoons butter – very soft
• 1 egg – room temp (or warmed up in a bowl of hot water)
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup evaporated cane sugar
• 3-1/2 cups unbleached flour
• 1 tsp active dry yeast

for the filling:

• 2 Tbsp butter – very soft
• 1 Tbsp butter – melted
• 1/4 cup evaporated cane juice – divided
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• cinnamon

In a large bowl, combine the starter with the milk, butter and eggs. Stir these up until they reach a soupy consistency. Add in the sugar, salt and yeast. Stir until combined. Add in the flour, 1 cup at a time. If it gets too hard to stir, dump it out onto a lightly floured countertop and knead the rest of the flour in.

Knead for a few minutes, until the four is all incorporated and the dough is no longer sticky.

Put unto an oiled rising bucket or bowl and put it into your cold oven for 5 hours or overnight. Leave the light off. You want this to have a sow rise overnight, but not as cold as the refrigerator. Mine had just doubled overnight.

In the morning, dump the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll it out in a rectangle to a 1/2 to 3/4″ thickness. Let it rest for a couple of minutes like this.

While the dough is resting, prepare your pan. I used a 9″ square baker and a mini loaf pan. In the baking pan, spread 1 Tbsp of the butter in the bottom of the pan so that it is covered with a thin layer. Get the sides and corners too. Sprinkle 1/3 of the sugar and 1/3 of the brown sugar into the bottom of the pan.

Back to the dough. Gently spread the remaining soft butter over the dough, adding the melted butter when you have it mostly covered. Be careful to leave one long end free of butter so you can seal the roll.

Sprinkle the sugar over the butter so that is covers the dough – you may need a bit more or less. Do the same with the brown sugar – sprinkling it with your hands. Cover the whole thing with ground cinnamon. I like a lot of cinnamon, some don’t like as much. Use the cinnamon to your taste. If you want them, now is the time to add dried fruit or nuts.

Roll the dough up, starting at the long end OPPOSITE the bare edge. When you get to the edge that has no butter, etc, on it, get your finger wet and run it down the edge to help it stick. Press it with your fingers to seal it.

Get a length of dental floss that is about 18″ long. Slip it under the end of the log and bring your hands up and cross them, slicing the dough cleanly. I made mine about 1″ to 1-1/2″ thick. Do this down the length of the dough, filling the pan.

I used about 2/3 of the roll as cinnamon rolls, and left the rest whole and tossed it into a mini loaf pan and baked it as cinnamon swirl bread. yum!

Let them sit to rise for about 20 minutes before pre-heating your oven. Preheat your oven to 350F. Before putting the rolls into the oven, I spread a bit of butter over the tops and sprinkled with brown sugar and drizzled with agave nectar. I like caramel-y rolls.

Cover with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Remove the foil and continue to bake for 15 minutes, or until the rolls begin to brown.

These can be turned over into a pan and served as caramel rolls as-is, or you can add cream cheese frosting.

For the frosting:

• 1- 8 oz. pkg cream cheese
• 1 cup sugar – white or powdered works fine
• 1/8 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1-1/2 cups heavy whipping cream

In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese, sugar, salt and vanilla until smooth. In a separate chilled bowl, whip the heavy cream until stiff peaks form. Add to the cream cheese mixture and whip just to combine – about 30 seconds.

Yep, that’s it.

Be careful when whipping the cream that you don’t over whip it and make butter… although for cinnamon rolls, that would be really tasty too. Starting with a well-chilled metal bowl helps.

So, now your rolls are out of the oven – perfectly caramel-y – and you have this big bowl of frosting. Spread it on thick. Then add some more. The rolls are still warm, so some of the frosting will melt down into them, making a deliciously creamy caramel in the bottom. Since you have just a teeny bit of frosting left you have a choice. You can either lick the bowl clean, or save it to dip fruit into. Or put a bit on each plate for people to add more to their already-covered rolls. They will love you for it.

No, this is not a low-fat recipe. But it is a tasty treat on days that you just want to splurge a little. It is very easy to put together, and in the morning it takes just over an hour start to finish – including baking time. If you start them in the afternoon you can put the pan of rolls into the refrigerator overnight and pull them out when you get up and turn the oven on. If you are using a stoneware pan, you will need it to warm up first though – just a reminder. Metal has no problem going into a hot oven still a little cold.

Let me know what you think! I’m going to go have another roll…

Tags: breakfast, cinnamon rolls, sourdough cinnamon rolls

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 8:45 am and is filed under Breads, Holiday, Kid-Friendly, breakfast, brunch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.