I Made It - Easy No Rise Cinnamon Rolls

Several weeks ago I started this occasional series featuring recipes I've found around the internet. I'll post my thoughts, our story of the recipe and my family's reactions.

This week I'm reviewing The Happy Housewife's Easy, No Rise Cinnamon Rolls.

The Story:
Recently I decided that I would start making "breakfast treats" for my family for Saturday morning. The rest of the week I try to keep fairly healthy, but I figured a splurge once/week wouldn't be a terrible thing. And I would still serve it with fruit or something else healthy. I'd been seeing a bunch of recipes for cinnamon rolls recently and was thinking I might try making them. But, every recipe I reviewed involved yeast and letting them rise. This was a problem for two reasons 1) time to let them rise was a huge hurtle for me, but more importantly 2) I don't have a good reputation when it comes to using yeast. Really, yeast and I have not had a happy relationship thus far. I am still rather nervous about using yeast - ever since that huge flop. So when I found this recipe for cinnamon rolls that uses baking powder instead of yeast, I thought, "This, I've gotta try." 

The Review:
I love this recipe! It went together pretty easily. I used a pastry blender to cut in the butter, but I'm wondering if a few quick pulses in the food processor would be easier and quicker. I think I'll try that the next time I make them - and there will definitely be a next time. I only needed about ¾ Cup milk. Rolling dough into a rectangle presents challenges for me, but I managed to do reasonably well this time. I'd suggest using very soft butter to spread over the dough, it's much easier to spread that way.  I found a 9x9 square pan was the perfect size for this recipe, but maybe I sliced mine thicker. For the icing I used the leftovers I had from these cookies. I warmed it up in the microwave for a few seconds and added a small bit of milk until it was "drizzle-able".  It worked great.

These are delicious Cinnamon Rolls, and they're not too difficult to make either. Eveyone in my family loved them. I heartily recommend this recipe to anyone who has issues with yeast. I had enough from the recipe that we ate some the first day, and then I froze the rest and we ate them a few weeks later.