B-b-b-baking: Super Fail Cinnamon Bun/Biscuit Things

Long time no see! I know I haven't been updating very much lately, and it's predictable, but I have to blame school. When I didn't have a midterm, I had a paper, and when I didn't have a paper, I had a midterm. That happened for the whole month, believe it or not.

Anyways, my day was pretty decent today until a bit into the evening. I can't find any evidence of a term paper that I wrote last semester, and I need to give a copy to one of the professors who will be an academic reference for my grad school application. I turned my room upside-down, and decided to make peace by baking something. It works sometimes...

Things I have learned today about cinnamon buns:
- Cinnamon buns were not made to be yeast-free. Whoever said you can make "perfectly fine" cinnamon buns with baking powder and baking soda in place of yeast...I'm not very happy with you, but it could have been that I just did something horribly wrong, which is very possible.
- You're supposed to spread the topping ingredients one at a time so that you don't just end up with a difficult-to-distribute cinnamon sugar paste.
- They smell really nice, and this relaxes me.
- In theory, they are very easy to make. It just takes patience - one virtue I lacked tonight.
- You could very likely replace the cinnamon topping with any other sweet or savoury filling :)

They look sort of okay from the top...

And then you see the bulging splits in the sides... :(

Super Fail Cinnamon Bun/Biscuit Things (adapted from Krissy's Creations)

Dough
1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour

1/3 cup brown rice flour

1 1/4 cup buckwheat flour

1 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp table salt

2 tbsp white granulated sugar

6 tbsp corn oil

1 1/2 cup unsweetened soymilk

Cinnamon-Sugar Filling

2 tbsp white granulated sugar

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

2 tbsp corn oil

1. Pre-heat oven to 425 F and line a baking pan with parchment paper.

2. Combine dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. I would suggest going by the original recipe's 2 3/4 cup all-purpose flour instead of my weird mixture. You'll probably get better results. I only used a bunch of random flours because I realized too late that I only had 1 1/4 cup all-purpose flour left, and ended up going into my collection of gluten-free ones. They have now been taken out of my gluten-free baking items area to avoid contamination.

3. In a large bowl, combine sugar, oil, and half of the milk. Then add the dry mixture. I would continue adding the other half of milk until the consistency you need has been reached. Something strange happened for me with the gluten-free flours and the amount of milk.

4. Dust the parchment paper with some extra flour, and flour your hands. Flatten the dough into a rectangle, about 1/4" thick, until it is smaller than the baking pan by a bit over an inch on both sides lengthwise.

5. If you want to be dumb like me, combine the sugar, cinnamon, and oil to make a paste and try to spread it evenly on the top of the rectangle. Otherwise, spread the oil first, then sprinkle the sugar and cinnamon.

6. Using the parchment paper to help you, roll the rectangle into a lengthwise log. Slice the log into 8 even pieces.

7. Spread the 8 cinnamon buns evenly on the baking pan and bake for 15 min.

8. Remove from oven and place onto cooling rack. You can top it with icing or a glaze if you'd like.

I ate the ugliest one, so that they don't look that terrible to my family tomorrow morning :( It did taste like cinnamon, but I think that as a result of the addition of so much random flour and playing around with it, it turned out more like a biscuit. I made enough glaze for one with 1/2 tsp soymilk, 2 tsp confectioner's sugar. I must make a batch of real cinnamon rolls to redeem myself.



Hopefully, you'll have better luck than I did...

See you again in a couple of weeks!

-M