Being Prepared

I was having a hankering for Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls so this weekend I set about to making them. They make a great gift for friends and neighbors too, so I knew I wouldn't be eating all six pans myself.

I got everything all set up and discovered I only had about 4 of the 8 required cups of flour. My choices at that point included #1: Go to the store and buy flour; #2: See if my neighbor had 4 cups of flour; #3: Wait until the next day and go to the store and get a few extra items while I was there. I went with option #4: Use a mixture of bread flour and cake flour. I didn't know how that would work but I was able to continue.

I did the required mixing and adding and heating and stirring. Then came the part where I took half the dough and pressed it out into the long rectangular shape. I spread the melted butter, sprinkled the sugar, then the cinnamon. I used up all the cinnamon in the jar. No worries. I had another jar in the pantry for the other half of the dough. I thought.

I thought wrong. I did find some stick cinnamon that has probably been in the cabinet for about two years. I could use that. Grating would be much too laborious and besides, I have my nifty, outlandishly expensive Vitamix blender I got this summer at the home show. It's supposed to be able to grind stuff. I know it does a good job on coffee beans because I've used it for that before.

I got it set up and tossed the cinnamon sticks in. The blender did great. I sprinkled the now ground cinnamon over the second half of the dough and added some chopped pecans just to add some extra calories.

Everything came out nicely. The rolls didn't rise up as high as I would have liked (from the wrong kind of flour maybe?) but they still taste great. I noticed as I was eating the first one that there were teeny hard bits. I thought maybe some shell from the nuts got in there and didn't think much of it. As I was eating the second roll and I got more bits I was thinking that's just too many bits. Then it occurred to me that the bits were actually cinnamon bits from the cinnamon I ground. I should have ground it a little longer and then sifted to get any bits out. Live and learn I guess.

It would just be rude to give away the pans that had the bits in them. That meant I had two whole pans with no bits that I could give away. They went to my friend Vicki, and my sister, the CheeseMaker. So that leaves four pans I have to eat by myself.

You see the sacrifices I make for my family and friends!

PS-Yes, I will share (~~twist my arm~~) with my husband and son.