Molecular biology

Another procrastination method! It's exam time (they started Monday) and it's getting stressful. What's a girl to do except make some tasty chow?

I find that exam time is pretty bittersweet. It's nice to have something to work towards and look forward to, but you still have to do all that work to get there. So during my study break (which ended up being an all-night break.. whoops!), I decided to do something that takes a little more effort than my usual cupcake fare: cinnamon rolls!

Also, like my exam preparation, I'm a pretty last minute kinda girl. So these cinnamon rolls were yeast-less, because I definately did not think ahead to buy any, and it was pretty rainy so leaving the house was a no-no. Luckily, the good lovely folks at Sugarlaws had a great no-yeast cinnamon recipe which I used. Unfortunately, we didn't have any cream cheese either!! So I made up an icing recipe which I have zip recollection of how much of what I used since I was throwing things in left and right hehe.

Icing Sugar
Milk
Vanilla Extract
CornstarchVanilla Ice Cream (it gave THE best flavour)



Basically I just mixed the icing sugar with milk and vanilla extract. We were practically out of icing sugar too (can you tell a grocery run was in order?) so it was too runny. I added cornstarch, nuked it for 30 seconds and it wasn't much thicker. More cornstarch and the ice cream were then added, then I microwaved it again for about a minute and it came out surprisingly great. LOVE cornstarch, I think it's so neat, I recommend YouTube-ing cornstarch and Non-Newtonian fluids for any science kids out there.



Cinnamon Rolls

INGREDIENTS
1 cup warm milk
2 eggs
1/3 cup butter, softened
4 1/2 cups bread flour1/2 cup sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder

1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp water (eliminate if you’re opening a new package of brown sugar)
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1/4 cup butter, softened

4 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

DIRECTIONS

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Mix the first six ingredients together in a large mixing bowl, mixing thoroughly until the dough forms a large ball. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine brown sugar, butter, water and cinnamon.
Divide the dough into ten pieces, and roll each one into a 2″ by 10″ rectangle. Spread the dough with the cinnamon mixture. Roll each strip into a tightly formed roll. Place rolls in a 9×13 inch baking pan, allowing some room for the rolls to expand. Bake the rolls until just starting to turn golden, about 15 minutes. While rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, and confectioners sugar. Spread frosting on the rolls before serving.

Makes 10 cinnamon rolls.



For me, this made more than 10 cinnamon rolls, but I did not really measure out how big 2" by 10" (who does!?).