Love Hate Relationship

Yeast......I love you, and I also hate you at the same time. You have brought tears of joy to my eyes when you work out well, and you have brought tears of frustration when recipes involving you go terribly, terribly wrong.

In the past I've mostly stayed away from anything involving yeast. But lately, I've been giving it a go again. I got a little cocky with a bread stick recipe that has turned out well the last few times. I decided to make some more complicated rolls last week using you as the star ingredient. I'm pretty sure 1 roll was eaten, and the rest tossed in the garbage. I decided to take a break from all things involving yeast.

That is until I got an email from my mom today with a recipe for cinnamon rolls that she said were out of this world. My mom said it was the easiest dough she has ever worked with. My mom has never lied to me, so I thought I would give it a shot. Besides when I told Jeff about the recipe I think his mouth started watering. And to be honest with myself, the thought of a gooey cinnamon roll covered in frosting finding it's way to my mouth was hard to resist!

And my mom was right (like she has been, and will most likely be the rest of my life). There was minimal mess, not very much flour in the recipe(I've found that's the key with me and yeast products), and the best dough I have EVER worked with.

This part was a little messy......But not difficult at all. I just scooped up the extra filling, and put it on top of the rolls once they were in the pan!

The end result were these:

Delicious, light, amazing and wonderful cinnamon rolls! And I only ate 1(tonight), so that's healthy right?

So my dear frenemy......Tonight I love and adore you!

Recipe:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup of milk

1/4 cup of butter(softened not melted)

3 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1 package instant yeast

1/4 cup white sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup water

1 egg

1 cup brown sugar, packed

1 T ground cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, softened (not melted)

Directions:

Heat the milk in a small saucepan until it bubbles, the remove from heat. Mix in butter;stir until melted. Let cool until lukewarm. This part is important because if the milk is too hot, it will kill the yeast.

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 1/4 cup flour, yeast, sugar and salt: mix well. Add water, egg and the milk mixture; beat well. Add the remaining flour, 1/2 cup at a time, stirring well after each addition. When the dough has just pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface (or a new trick of mine is to spray the counter with pam instead of using flour, this way you don't add too much flour to the dough and end up with heavy dough) and knead until smooth, about 5 minutes.

Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, cinnamon and softened butter.

Roll out dough into a 12x9 inch rectangle. Spread onto the dough the butter/sugar mixture. Roll up dough and pinch seam to seal. Cut into 12 equal sizes (I use non-flavored dental floss to cute the rolls) and place in sprayed cake pan. Cover and let rise until doubles, about 30 minutes. With about 10 minutes left in the rising process, Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Bake for 20 minutes, or until browned.

Once I took them out I let them rest for a few minutes and then frost them with (gasp) store bought cream cheese frosting. They were DELICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!