Happy New Year!

Starting with, Cinnamon Rolls.

I started off the New Year by finishing up a cooking project from yesterday. The fiance and I hosted one other couple for a relaxed New Year’s Eve dinner and appetizer event. Before the couple came over I decided it was time to finally get up my gumption to try to make cinnamon rolls. You see I had this bizarre compulsion to start traditions for our first Christmas in our first home. What makes a great morning tradition for Christmas? Cinnamon rolls, obviously. So I scoured a recipe from my recipe folder (yes I am old school like that I clip them from magazines and newspapers), and found a recipe for Raspberry-Swirl Sweet Rolls. However…they did not make it to Christmas morning. It turns out making Cinnamon Rolls from scratch, or any similar roll like object involves many steps, steps you don’t want to wait for on Christmas morning. So they were postponed for a good occasion…New Year’s Day.

Strawberry Swirl Breakfast Rolls

Is really what I ended up with. They turned out good, which I was thrilled about. I had never worked with active dry yeast before. I always feared the killing of it with too hot water (which I’d read about) or the overtly long kneading process (turns out not that long a process, and mildly relaxing). Something I did run into was an issue with the dough not rising as it should … too cold in our loft-y kitchen. A quick search on my friend the internet and I learned…your oven with the light turned on is just about perfect dough rising temperature of 85 degrees.

Aside from dealing with the active yeast and kneading, the most important thing I learned was…baking is not nearly as scary as my brain thinks it is. You can adapt it. If your recipe from Bon Appetit magazine says in step one to use an electric stand mixer, you don’t really need to. Maybe the proportions should change so you can search for a similar dough recipe in your Cooking Light cookbook and find one that lets you just use a spoon. The rolls probably aren’t as fluffy, but you made homemade breakfast rolls with glaze on them, complaints will not be happening regardless. And if the store has no frozen raspberries, strawberries are fine. It turns out baking has plenty more leeway than I knew. Yes measuring is still more important than in cooking and there are a few more steps, but overall might be worth learning more about. There is no need to fear baking!