This month presented a pastry item I thought I’d never make: cinnamon rolls. I didn’t grow up eating them, and except for Cinnabon (which I think I’ve eaten one of in my entire life), I still don’t eat them. But I do like cinnamon. And the whole point of Daring Bakers is to push you out of your comfort zones.

This month the Daring Bakers kept our creativity rolling with cinnamon bun inspired treats. Shelley from C Mom Cook dared us to create our own dough and fill it with any filling we wanted to craft tasty rolled treats, cinnamon not required!

Someone had suggested using these directions for a really great cinnamon roll, and I have to admit they were absolutely right. The recipe was involved and time-consuming (lots of bowls, utensils, two times where you had to allow the dough to rise for an hour) but by no means difficult. And the resulting cinnamon rolls were delicious: the pastry was fluffy and soft (must have been the mashed potatoes! I used Trader Joe’s frozen mashed potato medallions), and the cinnamonness (for the lack of a better word…) was great.

I realized belatedly that I didn’t have the powdered sugar to make the icing/glaze for the top. Most recipes I found online involved cream cheese, which I find nauseating (I really didn’t want to layer on a thick frosting), but I found out that I could make my own powdered sugar: you just blend 1 cup of granulated sugar with 1 tbsp cornstarch until it pulverizes. I used my Magic Bullet and it turned out reasonably well – the sugar was still a bit more granular than I wanted, but since it would be dissolved into a slurry, it didn’t really matter. The cornstarch really helped make it into a thick glaze and not just simply syrup.

Served at the end of brunch and everyone, even the kiddies, liked it!

Pics after the jump.

(more…)