Cinnamon Rolls, As Requested

Nora's school serves breakfast every morning, to every child who wants it, free of charge. She is not interested.

Lately, though, she has been asking me when they will serve cinnamon rolls. She thought yesterday was the day, for some reason, but when she got to school with an empty stomach, it wasn't the day after all.

Today is her last day of first grade. I thought cinnamon rolls would be an appropriate sendoff, so I stayed up until 12:35 prepping them. You know how that pesky yeast needs time to rise and all.

So anyhow, I know y'all probably think I work for allrecipes.com, but I don't. I just like making recipes that other people have tried. This cinnamon roll recipe has 5 stars from almost 3,000 people, so I knew it would be a winner. It's right...........here!

I followed the recipe as-is except for two things. First, I don't ever buy margarine, so I used butter in the dough. Second, it was late at night and I got confused and mixed the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon all together for the filling instead of spreading the butter on the dough and topping it with the cinnamon and brown sugar. I have to say that it actually worked better. Everything stayed put instead of sliding off and all landing on the bottom. Don't the little pinwheels look cute?

The other thing: after I took the above photo, I put the cover on the pan, put it in the fridge and went to bed. By morning, they had grown and were touching each other. A nice, slow, cool rise in the fridge worked just fine.

After letting them warm up on the counter for 30 minutes this morning, I put them in the cold oven, turned it to 350 and baked them for about half an hour.

Once they cooled a bit, I turned them out onto a cutting board and returned them to the pan upside down. Why? Because I could see the filling oozing all over the bottom of the pan, and I could see no oozing on top. I flipped them over so the filling would run back down and coat the other side, too.

At this point, I went to wake Nora up. I asked her if she could smell the cinnamon rolls and a big smile spread out across her face. Later, she asked Kevin, "Do you smell that? Mom made me cinnamon rolls!"

Finally, I mixed up the cream cheese icing and slathered it on top of the warm (NOT HOT!) rolls. Nora licked the spatula and Dana licked the beater. Then Nora licked all of the icing off of her cinnamon roll, ate two bites, and went out to catch the bus. Meanwhile, I grabbed a cup of coffee and proceeded to eat two rolls.

I am very tired today. However, it was totally worth staying up too late, getting up too early, and seeing that smile on my girl's face.