30 Minute Cinnamon Rolls

Family Day is a recently implemented holiday in Ontario, and I’m incredibly grateful for a long weekend smack in the middle of February. J and I have our families close by, and it is the perfect opportunity to get together. Since family gatherings (at least at our house) revolve around food, I was searching for the perfect recipe to make our Family Day breakfast a little more special. Cinnamon rolls were an obvious choice — a great addition to breakfast, totally delicious, and really…who doesn’t need an excuse to eat icing at breakfast?

I’ve got a tried-and-true cinnamon roll recipe that rises overnight, and I had fully planned to bake that up in time for our 9:00 breakfast. Thanks to pregnancy brain and the never-ending all-day nausea, I completely forgot to mix up the dough the night before. So instead, panicked and scrambling on Saturday morning (and not feeling like running to the store for a tube of Pillsbury dough), I searched for an easy, no-rise, half-hour-or-less cinnamon roll recipe. And with some tweaks and adjustments, I came up with the perfect one. If these take you longer than 30 minutes to make AND bake, I’ll buy you a tube of Pillsbury dough just to make up for it.

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2/3 cup cold butter, cut into cubes
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp lemon juice
1 egg

Filling:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp cinnamon

Icing:
1/4 cup cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
2 cups icing sugar
milk

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With your fingers or a pastry cutter, mix in the butter until the whole mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, lemon juice and egg; pour into the dry ingredients and mix together into a soft dough.

Turn this dough out onto a floured surface, and knead 10-15 times. Roll it into a large rectangle. Spread butter over the rectangle, and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Starting with a long edge facing away from you, roll the whole thing towards yourself until it resembles one long log. Roll tightly; more rolls means more cinnamon-swirls in the middle. Cut this log into 12 equal pieces. Press each of these rolls, swirl-side up, in a greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

While the cinnamon rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, and butter until smooth. Beat in icing sugar, adding small amounts of milk as needed to thin it out. Icing should be fairly thin, but not thin enough that it will just run off the rolls.

When the rolls come out of the oven, pour icing over the top. Serve warm, or let cool completely, wrap in plastic wrap, and keep in the fridge to reheat another day.

Baking For Babies: Veggie Monster Muffins

As Kennedy starts eating more and more table food (who am I kidding…she never ate baby food), its a real struggle to get vegetables into her. All of our go-to snacks seem to be carb-based; crackers, puffs, MumMums, toast. Its pretty tough to hand a ten-month-old a leaf of lettuce, and she doesn’t seem to like steamed broccoli or any of the standard ‘baby’ vegetables.

So that left me searching for a recipe that 1. she would eat, 2. had lots of vegetables and 3. wasn’t full of sugar. And when I couldn’t find quite what I was looking for, I created a recipe of my own. These ‘monster muffins’ taste like blueberry-banana oatmeal muffins, but they come out bright green (depending on the veggies you add). By labelling them ‘monsters’, I circumvented the inevitable ‘ewwww’ that comes from seeing green baked goods. They’re monsters… they’re SUPPOSED to be green.

Have fun with these – toss in any combination of fruits and vegetables that you like. Each mini muffin is packed full of goodness…and they taste pretty good, too!

Veggie Monster Muffins
(36 mini muffins or 18 standard muffins)

Ingredients:
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup quick oats
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup sour cream
2 eggs
2 apples
1 carrot, grated
2 bananas
1 cup blueberries
1 1/2 cups assorted vegetables (kale, spinach, zucchini, broccoli, anything)

Directions:
In a food processor, blender or Magic Bullet, combine vegetables, sliced apples, and bananas. Puree until everything is blended and smooth (a few small chunks are okay, but they’ll be present in the muffins). Set aside.

In the bowl of a mixer, beat together butter and sugar until fluffy. Mix in eggs until fully incorporated. Add vanilla, sour cream, pureed vegetables, and grated carrots, and stir until combined.

In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, oats, spices and baking soda. Stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients. Add blueberries and stir to mix.

Scoop batter into greased or lined mini-muffin tins. These will also bake fine in standard muffin tins, but you will need to increase the baking time. Bake at 375 degrees for about 20 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then cool on a rack.

These freeze really well, so make a big batch and just take out a few each day.

Beautiful Breakfasts: Coconut Granola

We’ve been on a bit of a health kick lately. I say that lightly, because while I have been watching what I’m eating, that doesn’t mean there isn’t room for the occasional chocolate cake. However, I’ve got a bit of baby weight left to lose, and cupcakes for breakfast just haven’t been helping with that.

I tend to get fixated on one specific breakfast at a time. First it was overnight refrigerator oatmeal. Then it was rye toast with peanut butter and bananas. And now, its granola.

Chewy, crunchy, toasty, wonderful granola. With bananas and almond milk, on fruit salad, or (my favourite), mixed into Greek yogurt. And because its so easy to make, I can whip up a batch at the beginning of the week, and have breakfast (and snacks) for the next several days. Plus, its easily customizable; nuts, cranberries, coconut, trail mix, seeds, chocolate chips…whatever you’d like can be stirred in. Give it a try – and let me know what great combinations you come up with!

Breakfast Granola:

4 cups quick cooking oats
1/2 cup coconut oil (or vegetable oil if you prefer)
1/2 cup honey or maple syrup
1 tbsp brown sugar
1 tbsp cinnamon
2 tbsp each chia, flax and hemp seeds
1 cup unsweetened flaked coconut*
1 cup trail mix *
*replace these with 2 cups of anything you’d like. Dried cranberries, banana chips, nuts, seeds, etc.

Mix all ingredients together well. Spread on a greased baking sheet, and bake at 300 degrees for an hour, stirring well every 15 minutes. Let cool completely on the pan. Store in an airtight container for a week to 10 days.

Breakfast of Champions

I’ll be posting about our journey with sleep training in a few days, once I’ve got a bit more experience under my belt. But while we were jumping into our first night of the Ferber method, I knew I would need something to distract myself from the periods of crying. I needed my hands occupied to keep from biting my nails down, or snatching K up from her crib.

So I made cinnamon rolls. Overnight cinnamon rolls, to be exact.

Since yeast-based rolls need to rise a few times, I would have to get up at the crack of dawn to have rolls made for breakfast. And that really isn’t my style. So instead, these can be made the night before, put in the fridge, and then baked 45 minutes before you want to eat them. Fairly simple, delicious, and infinitely better than the slice and bake ones in a can.

Overnight Sticky Cinnamon Rolls

Dough
1 1/4 cups warm milk (I used almond milk)
2 1/4 tsp (1 pkg) instant dry yeast
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 melted butter
3 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp salt

Goo

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 cup maple syrup

Filling
2/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp cinnamon
3 tbsp melted butter

Instructions
Stir the yeast into the warm milk, let stand while you measure the other ingredients. Put all dough ingredients into the bowl of a mixer (or just a bowl), and stir until combined. Add the milk, stir until it comes together in a ball. Knead with the dough hook for three minutes, or on a floured surface by hand for five minutes. Place into an oiled bowl, cover in plastic wrap, and let rise for 90 minutes to 2 hours.

For the goo, add butter, brown sugar and maple syrup to a saucepan. Heat on the stove until combined and bubbly. Pour into the bottom of a 9×13 pan, and let cool.

Once the dough has risen, roll it out into a large rectangle. Brush with melted butter, then sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll from the longer side into a log, pulling the dough tight as you go. Slice into twelve rolls, and arrange in the goo-filled 9×13 pan.

If its five in the morning, and you want to eat your cinnamon rolls for breakfast, let them stand (covered in plastic wrap) for another 45 minutes to rise. Then, bake at 350 for about 40 minutes, until golden brown. Invert them on a plate, and serve.

If its eight in the evening, and you want your cinnamon rolls for breakfast, wrap them in plastic and refrigerate over night. Then, in the morning, put the pan into a cold oven, set the oven to 350 degrees, and leave them for 45 minutes. By the time the oven is preheated and the timer has gone, your cinnamon rolls will have risen and baked perfectly. Invert these on a plate, and serve. Lick the pan, once its cooled off enough that you won’t burn your tongue.