Overnight Cinnamon Rolls

I love homemade cinnamon rolls. My dad always makes some for Christmas morning, and I wanted to try them out for myself. I really wanted an overnight recipe, because I am not a great morning person and waiting that long in the morning for cinnamon rolls just seemed like too much work. I found two recipes that I liked, from here and here, and combined the two to make some really great cinnamon rolls.

I actually made these again at my in-law's house for Christmas morning, and they loved them and requested that I be there every Christmas to make them again. These are so tasty, that it's hard to eat just one.

Ingredients:

 Dough:

1 tbsp active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm water
4 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 

1 tsp kosher salt
4 eggs
1/4 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter 

Filling:

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp cinnamon

Frosting:

3 ounces cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer, sprinkle the yeast over the water, allow to bloom for a few minutes, then whisk until smooth. 

2. Whisk in 1/2 cup of the flour. Cover with plastic wrap and let stand in a warm spot for about 30 minutes.

3. Add the eggs, sugar, butter, salt, and remaining 4 cups flour to the yeast mixture. With the dough hook, knead on medium speed until smooth, about 8-12 minutes.  Add a bit more flour to reduce stickiness if needed. This makes my stand mixer really warm, so be prepared for that. 

4. Cover with plastic wrap, set in a warm spot and let rise until doubled, about 2 hours.

5. While dough is rising, prepare filling. Take 2 tbsp of the stick of butter and set aside. Beat remaining butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon together until combined and slightly fluffy, about 1 minute. It will be pretty thick.

6. Butter a 9×13 baking dish. Transfer the dough to a floured work surface.

7. Roll out into a rectangle about 15×10 in.

Or a lumpy oval. Same thing.

8. Spread filling onto dough. The easiest way I found to do this was to just use my hands. You'll get a little messy, but you'll smell yummy like cinnamon!

9. Roll the dough up length-wise.

10. Cut your rolls. I just use a knife, because I don't care if they're a little smooshed. Dental floss cuts through dough as well. You can cut the rolls to your liking. This will make 12 small rolls, 10 medium ones, or 8 large rolls.
11. Place in buttered baking dish.

12. Melt the reserved 2 T butter and brush on top of rolls. 

13. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight.
14. The next morning, remove from refrigerator and let rise until half again as high, about 1 hour.

16. Preheat the oven to 350. Bake until golden brown, about 30 minutes.

15. While baking, prepare the frosting. 

Whip cream cheese and butter together, then add in vanilla and lemon juice. Add the powdered sugar slowly until it's all incorporated.

 

Beat on high for about 5 minutes until it is light and fluffy.

16. Once rolls are out of the oven, immediately frost using half the frosting. This will melt and slide down into the rolls.

17. After they have cooled a few more minutes, frost again with remaining frosting. This step isn't entirely necessary, but it makes the frosting look nicer.

And those are my cinnamon rolls! They're a little work, but sooooo worth it. They are giant and soft and cinnamony, which is everything a cinnamon roll should be. They also make my apartment smell amazing. They're best served warm, but I've been known to pull of pieces straight out of the fridge and eat them. These are great for a get-together, because you can prep everything the night before, even the frosting. Then just pull them out and let them rise, and pop them in the oven and bake!

Pumpkin Chip Muffins

I wanted to make pumpkin muffins because it's fall now. Yay! I love this season. I've pretty much become obsessed with pumpkin things, and I've already watched The Nightmare Before Christmas twice. Just this week I bought pumpkin spice bagels, pumpkin spice cream cheese and pumpkin pie yogurt. Obsessed. I found a lot of recipes for pumpkin chocolate chip muffins, but thought white chocolate chips would be better, so I decided to try both. I used this recipe for my base, and then divided it into two and made half with white chocolate chips and half with regular chocolate chips.

Ingredients:

1 2/3 cup flour

1 cup sugar

1 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cloves

1 & 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup chocolate chips (1/2 semi-sweet, 1/2 white)

2 large eggs

1 cup canned solid-pack pumpkin

1/2 cup unsalted butter,  melted

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350ºF. Grease 12 muffin tins or use paper liners.

2. Mix together eggs, pumpkin and butter in a large bowl.

3. Combine dry ingredients (flour, sugar, spices, baking soda, baking powder and salt) and then add to the wet ingredients. Be careful to not overmix.

4. Add in your chocolate chips. This was where I divided the batter and added the chocolate chips, 1/2 cup each.

5. Fill each muffin tin about 2/3 full.

6. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes until toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

I definitely liked the white chocolate chip/pumpkin combo the best. Regular chocolate chips tasted fine, but the white chocolate kind of reminded me of cool whip on top of pumpkin pie. This recipe was not my favorite muffin recipe though. The muffins were a little dense, but I've never made pumpkin muffins before and they might all be dense, so I will probably try some more recipes soon!

Glazed Spice Muffins

These muffins came from this recipe and were supposed to be "Glazed Doughnut Muffins". They sounded delicious, and I was way too lazy to actually go get donuts Sunday morning, so I thought muffins would be the perfect solution. That title was incredibly misleading. What I ended up with were very tasty Glazed Spice Muffins that in no way resembled any sort of doughnut I've ever had. Talk about a disappointment. However, these are still quite good, as long as you aren't expecting doughnut flavor. I'm not bitter or anything.

 Ingredients:

For the Muffins:
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 + 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup milk

For the Glaze:
3 tbsp melted butter
1 cup confectioners sugar
3/4 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp hot water

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425° F and grease 12 muffin cups. I use non-stick spray and spray all up inside the cups, and then rub it in with a paper towel so that there's not little grease puddles in the bottom of the cups.

2. Combine butter, sugars and vegetable oil until smooth. For some reason, when I make muffins, I like to use the hand mixer instead of my stand mixer. I think it's easier to get the consistency right when you do it by hand.

3. Beat in eggs one at a time.

With eggs!

 4. Add in baking powder, baking soda, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and vanilla and mix it all together.

5. Add in the flour and milk, but not all at once. Alternate between flour and milk, beginning and ending with the flour. I did 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk, 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup milk and then the final 2/3 cup flour.

Top left: First cup flour. Top right: 1/2 cup milk. Bottom left: 2nd cup flour. Bottom right: The rest of the milk

Final batter after the last of the flour was added.

6. Scoop the batter into the cups. The easiest way to do this is with an ice-cream scoop. All of the muffins will turn out the same size, which is important when baking them.

7. Bake for 15-17 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean.

8. While the muffins are cooling, mix up your glaze. To do that, you just put all the ingredients together in a bowl:

And mix:

Super easy.

9. After the muffins are cooled, dip them in the glaze. I put mine on a wire rack, so that the extra glaze would drip off onto the paper towel and not my table.

To dip the muffins, I just turned them upside down and swirled them in the glaze. The glaze then melted down the sides a little bit and settled into all the crack in the muffins. They turned out really pretty.

All glazed up

And that's it! Once I got over the fact that they weren't doughnutty at all, these muffins were actually quite tasty. The glaze hardens up after awhile and makes a nice crust on top of the muffins, while the inside is nice and chewy. They make a wonderful breakfast on a fall morning.

Yummy!