In order to boost someone’s mood I tried an obvious baked good that I’ve often enjoyed but never made.
I.
I grew up in a split-level three story house with a living room on the main level and family room with a wood stove in the basement. Over the years I hauled in a lot of wood for that stove / fireplace, and for the most part it was just there for warmth in the winter. But on occasion it is where doughs rose.
My mother was the first good cook I knew. She was easily the best in the circle of family and family friends we had, and my brother and I ate better home-cooked meals that the neighbor kids, whose parents maxed out their culinary skills with hotdog and spaghetti. That is not to say that everything she touched turned to gold; in particular I “blame” her for my decades-long hatred and suspicion of brussels sprouts.
But it would also be from her that I gained my love of most fresh vegetables, as well as liver and onions, salmon loaf, spinach, and more. Homemade waffles did not exist and came from the freezer, but pancakes were plentiful, as were bacon and eggs.
And she could bake.
Breads were not really her thing, and pie crusts and she never got along. But cinnamon rolls …
… cinnamon rolls rising and proofing on the stove in the basement. In the winter. In the morning. Filling the basement and then the whole house with that unmistakable aroma.
So I find it curious that given my long history of baking and my love of cinnamon rolls that I’d never, ever made any.
II.
On the one hand cinnamon rolls can be time consuming. They, ‘traditionally,’ rise twice like most yeast breads, the first time as a mass of dough in a bowl, the second time ‘proofing’ as nearly-ready-to-bake rolls. Give yourself ninety minutes or even overnight for that process, depending on how much yeast you use. As with other yeast doughs there is kneading involved.
And there are so many variations. What goes into the dough? Eggs and butter? What goes into the filling? Butter, sugar and cinnamon? And what about the glaze? Should it be creamy white, more of a frosting, of milky coffee brown?
Yet it’s just a yeast dough. You don’t need a sourdough starter. A slightly wetter dough than the 5:3 (flour:water by weight) ratio works fine. The amount of yeast just determines how long the first rise will take. If you can make white bread from scratch, you can make cinnamon rolls.
Yeast doughs can be awfully forgiving.
III.
Ms. S. came home somewhat upset from a less than stellar work shift. “All I want to do is eat cinnamon rolls and drink wine,” she told me at 7:30am. But she had afternoon appointments this Friday. She knew that the gooey sugar buzz from deep, rich, store-bought cinnamon rolls would be immediately appealing but upon later reflection appalling.
And with that melancholy morning mood she fell into troubled slumber.
I figured that I therefore had several hours to make vegan cinnamon rolls a reality. There’s a first time for everything.
What are the considerations? No eggs, no butter, no honey. The dough needs to stay moist, which either means more water and a looser dough, a softening and moistening agent (something oil and eggs accomplish), or a lower baking time. Furthermore I wanted them to be “relatively” healthful. Four, five, six-hundred or higher calorie goods were out of the question, but that’s exactly what a lot of flour, loads of sugar, a half cup of oil, and a thick glaze will get you.
See also: Classic Cinnabon Roll
The calorie count of a cinnamon roll is just proportional to size, and if you eliminate eggs and oils, it’s really just the flour and a little sugar contributing most of the flour. Furthermore there are just two of us, and we do not need a 9×13″ pan of big rolls, no matter how tasty they are. My goal was, therefore, about 200 calories per roll using an 8×8″ or 9×9″ baking dish. To keep in moisture and substitute for eggs and butter I decided to go with mildly fruity but not overpowering pumpkin and unsweetened apple sauce.
IV.
Dough:
- 210g flour
- 1/2 cup ‘milk’ (120mL)
- 1/4 cup pumpkin, ~60g
- pinch of salt
- 1 tsp active dry yeast
- 1/2 tsp sugar
Filling:
- 2 Tbsp sugar
- cinnamon
- 1/4 cup apple sauce
Glaze:
- 1/4 cup powdered sugar
- 2 Tbsp ‘milk’
- vanilla extract
- Mix the pumpkin and 1/2 cup ‘milk’ in a pyrex cup, and microwave until warm to the touch. Stir in the yeast and let it all sit until foamy. I like to give it five or more minutes; this batch doubled in volume in that time.
- In a mixing bowl combine 100g flour and a pinch of salt. Add some ‘pumpkin-y’ spices (like cinnamon, clove, or nutmeg) if you wish. It’s autumn; why not go for more pumpkin?
- Stir the liquid into the flour, and mix until you have a shaggy dough. Stir in another 50g of flour. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, and knead, adding flour until all the flour is absorbed and the dough is smooth and relatively elastic. This should take 6-10 minutes.
- Lightly oil a bowl (non-stick cooking spray is good) and let the dough rise until it doubles, about an hour or hour and a half.
- Punch down and turn out the dough. Roll or shape it into a rectangle. You can use a rolling pin, but I didn’t find this necessary. I’d say my dough rolled out to about 14″ per side. Make it about 1/8″ to 1/4″ thick. Coat with apple sauce. Sprinkle evenly with sugar and cinnamon; brown sugar (not packed down) is a good choice. I also sprinkled on a small package of Stevia to increase the sweetness a bit without really altering the calories. Roll it into a log, pinching it down after every rotation. Then seal the seam with a little water. Cut it into six pieces; you can also chop off the ends, which probably don’t have the same amount of sugar and cinnamon … just nibble on that extra inch or so of dough! Place them evenly in a 9×9″ or 8×8″ lightly greased pan (again: non-stick spray works wonders), cover, and let proof, about 45 minutes.
- Preheat your oven to 350F.
- Bake the rolls about 20-25 minutes. You want them slightly ‘under done’ so that they stay moist on the inside.
- Stir ‘milk’ into powdered sugar. Add a splash of vanilla extract. If it is too moist, add a dash of cornstarch, if it is too dry add more ‘milk,’ until a pour-able glaze is achieved. You can make it more interesting by first stirring some cornstarch into a tablespoon of ‘milk’ (I used soy milk) and microwaving it until hot, about 20-30 seconds. This will thicken it a bit, and then add a splash or white or apple cider vinegar to sour it. This is basically quick and dirty “soy yogurt.” Then mix the rest of the ingredients in. Coat the still-cooling rolls.
What I did was pour the glaze over them. In the future I would reduce the amount of apple sauce, perhaps as much as by half. I ended up with very moist rolls, but I also had some apple sauce squeeze out of the rolls and into the pan. This, however, helps to make a fruity glaze, so after pouring the sugar-vanilla glaze over the rolls, I returned them to the oven for another five to ten minutes. When I took them out I used to spoon to ‘baste’ the rolls with the liquid glaze that hadn’t yet set but had pooled in the seams.
V.
Of course I had to ‘test’ said rolls before serving one to Ms. S. … it would not do to serve her a tasteless mass of dough. While they were still warm I cut one from the pan and slipped it onto a saucer. The pumpkin is noticeable but not overpowering. The apple is muted. The glaze, too sweet on its own, is subdued when it settles on and into the rolls.
They’re not particularly large rolls, but the six of them filled (2×3) the square glass baking dish. I contemplated making only four rolls (at 300 calories each), in which case I should rolled out the dough in a more elongated rectangle. Similarly, I think one could also pack them 3×3 into the pan and make nine smaller rolls.
Ms. S. awoke and was happy to have the treat. I’m pleased to have an improvised recipe that worked out nicely and that with a few tweaks should serve me well for many batches to come.
