I'll admit...I'm not one to tip-toe into things. I may try a few easy steps and then I'll dive in head first to a really challenging thing. While it's not always a good thing to do that (especially since when I fail, I get frustrated and don't try whatever it was again...), it turned to be not so bad this time.
I do need to give myself a little bit of credit though. I can make four realllly good things: my mom's secret chocolate chip cookies, mashed potatoes, my completely-from-scratch pumpkin pie which even uses our Halloween jack-o-lantern for the pumpkin, and my chicken pot pie, complete with from-scratch Martha Stewart pie crusts. But, other than that, I'm a from-the-box, or from-the-freezer cook.
My foods of choice since I got Mark's book have been breakfast foods. This is mostly because I'm always the first person up in the house, we have all the ingredients already in the pantry, and I have full roam of the kitchen. Before I declared my year of following How to Cook Everything, I'd already made two breakfast dishes from the book. I gave a try at French toast and aside from leaving the bread in the batter too long, it wasn't bad. Our older son couldn't get enough of them. I also, that same morning, gave a try to the cheddar cheese scrambled eggs. I was going to make the eggs anyway and decided to look up what I could simply add to make them better. Yep, those were good too. Last night, while browsing through, I came across the bread section (yay!!) and saw cinnamon rolls. The deal with this, however, is that you have to make them completly from scratch...dough and all (eek!). The total cook time for these was estimate to be three hours, so I made the dough last night and let the yeast rise slowly in the fridge. I checked it after two hours and it hadn't risen a bit, so I got a wee-bit concerned that I screwed it up. But, this morning, I happily noticed that it was a much larger ball...thank goodness. I hadn't messed this up yet!
I followed the comprehensive five steps listed for prepping and rolling out the dough and sprinkling it with the cinnamon-sugar mixture. I added sprinkles of water, actually too much, and the filling was a little runny (not to mention messy...if you know me, that's how I roll). I popped those into the oven and then set my attention to making the frosting. I'd already decided last night that I'd make a clear caramel glaze, but when I saw we had a lone tub of cream cheese in the fridge, that was made into cream cheese frosting. This suprisingly wasn't hard to make, I just followed most of the directions (I didn't whip the cream cheese before hand...oops again), but it turned out delicious. The rolls came out about 2 1/2 inches in diameter, the perfect size for eating three or four. I had cut both recipes in half since I had the inkling that if I did them full, I'd be able to feed an army, and it's a good thing I did. In total, there were 14 rolls and about two cups of frosting, one of which is still left and sitting in the Rubbermaid in the fridge (can that stuff keep anyway??). The only thing is that in my worry of the rolls being under cooked, I over cooked them and the bottoms were a little hard. Nothing a glass of milk can't fix though! So, with lotsa luck, today was a success. My kitchen still has dishes everywhere, but I'll get to that. For now, I'll sit and savor my cinnamon rolls and a big glass of milk and listen to my toddler complain that his hands are sticky :)
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