Cinnamon Rolls Aren't Just for Breakfast If You Try Hard Enough...

I believe in things like breakfast cake and breakfast pie. So if I can have dessert for breakfast, why can't I have breakfast for dessert? These are truly deep thoughts I consider on an almost daily basis. I realize I am slightly ahead of (or completely perpendicular to) my time when it comes to things like this. But I did finally solve that problem about breakfast for dessert, and you are reaping the benefits, my loyal readers...

Cinnamon rolls and cookies all in one? You say madness, I say yumminess.

This all came about because of that scent burner I bought before cleaning my oven last week. I was finally able to acquire a non-broken light bulb to fit in the burner (how such a simple task could turn into returned orders to Amazon and lots of disappointment in my local Lowe's, I'll never fully grasp), and along with that, vanilla sugar scent cubes that once melted, smell exactly like cinnamon rolls. Much like Pavlov's poor dog and that damn bell, about a half hour after I would turn on the scent burner  my mouth would get all watery and all I wanted was a friggin cinnamon roll. Specifically, a Cinnabon, because when I dream of calories, I dream big. My overachieving truly has no limits. So I did a little Pinteresting and found a recipe for Cinnabon cookies. The mouthwatering started again shortly after reading the recipe, so apparently I've classically conditioned myself into a corner...thanks, Pavlov.

I won't lie to you, these cookies are as time consuming as they are hard not to eat during the baking process. Muster up that willpower, and start by mixing together your dough:

• Cup of love/butter, all nice 'n soft
• 1/3 C of my other favorite ingredient, sugar
• 2 1/4 C flour
• 3/4 C cocaine powdered sugar
• Tsp of "the good stuff," a.k.a., vanilla extract
• 2 Tsp orange zest (I am lazy and used the kind from a jar)
• 1/2 Tsp of artery clogger (salt, as if you had your doubts)
• 1 Chicken embryo (I am told these are commonly referred to as "eggs")

Mix everything except the egg and flour together until well combined. My mixer was being extremely temperamental after months of neglect, so this took turning it off and scraping down the sides of the bowl once or twice. Since this recipe goes against everything I believe in and you don't add the chicken embryo first, I still recommend cracking it open into a bowl first to make sure you've got a "good egg."  If it hasn't gone bad (in the spoiled sense, not the crime spree sense), dump it in and mix well. Slowly add in your flour until you've got a nicely mixed dough. Now comes the fun part...

Kitchen utensil brutality.

I put down parchment paper and then plopped my dough in the middle before beating it repeatedly to start to flatten it out. If you choose to slowly roll out your dough to flatten it first, you're really missing out on a legal way to let out your frustrations. Phone company spray painted a section of your white fence red? KAPOW! Work sucking the youthful spirit and hopefulness of educating a new generation out of you? WHAMMY! Hedgehog feeling under the weather and being unable to help her making you realize you're not as all-powerful as you thought? SPLAT! I mean, it has been a pretty shitty week around here, so this rolling pin may have saved me a trip to jail. I digress...you pretty much want to beat/roll out a large square-like shape. I beat/rolled mine out to a 16" square-like shape. Square-like is really a generous term for how my dough ended up looking. But you want it to be very large so you get the pretty spiral effect from your filling. To make that cinnamon-y goodness you need:

• 6 TBS of love/butter (also soft and squishy)
• 2 TBS flour
• 1 TBS cinnamon
• 1/4 C brown sugar
• 1 1/2 Tsp of light corn syrup (I couldn't unscrew the lid and had to stab my way in)
• 1/2 Tsp of the good stuff/vanilla extract
• 1/2 Tsp of artery clogger/salt

Just mix that together until it gets blended thoroughly after a few minutes. I then took my large angled spatula and spread out the filling to the edges of my dough:

I hadn't licked the spatula at this point...I swear.

At this point, I thought about just making it a cinnamon roll pizza.

You better believe I licked my spatula clean, and I did not have one single regret other than my large angled spatula couldn't be an even larger angled spatula. Now, if you choose not to go the cinnamon roll pizza route, it is time to start rolling in up the dough.

Start by picking up your wax paper
and rolling the edge of the dough down very slowly.

Once you've got the rolling started,
pull your parchment paper down in the same direction you've started rolling.
Like water off a duck's back, gravity,
the magic of boy bands, or other things that are infallible,
you'll find the roll will naturally fall where it needs to.

See, told you so. Now just repeat this until you're at the end of your log.

Ugh, now I wanted to cook it like this because it looked like a giant cinnamon roll burrito.

But instead I rolled it around a few more times in my paper so there weren't any air bubbles (no farting cinnamon rolls, if you will), and then folded up my edges and smooshed them up a bit so they weren't so flat they couldn't yield a cookie when cut.

Keep your dough wrapped up and put it in the freezer for a half hour. I had a flat edge on my dough log (almost ate that "as is" before stopping myself with will power I didn't know I had) since it was placed on to a baking sheet when it was in the freezer. I was totally fine with this; I just wanted to hurry up and get to the good part. I suppose you could rotate it while in the freezer if you're craving a perfect circle over quicker oven-to-mouth time. I had my virgin-clean oven preheated to 375 and cut my log into individual cookies. Thickness is up to you. I like a thicker cookie, so I went for about a half inch per slice and threw them in the oven for 6 minutes, rotated, and cooked for 7 more minutes. The result, you ask?

Glad I stuck with cinnamon roll cookies and not cinnamon roll burrito or pizza.

The cookies will be blonde, but the cinnamon roll goop will bubble up and out a bit once done. These cookies were surprisingly not overly sweet, so I may or may not have had one (read: three or four) before I even realized how many I had crammed down my gullet. Like Spritz cookies during Christmas season- all love (read: butter) and a sprinkling of sweetness. Once these bad boys have cooled off, it is time to frost with the cinnamon roll icing, which will add just the perfect amount of sweet to finish them off. Mix together:

• 1 Tsp of agua (water, you non-bilingual soul)
• 1 Tsp of the good stuff/vanilla extract
• 2 TBS of light corn syrup
• 1/2 C cocaine powdered sugar

Mix all this together and wait for your cookies to cool to room temperature. Now you can see why I accidentally ate a few of these before frosting them...I am impatient and I don't care if you're judging me right now...I'm the one with the cookies; therefore, I am the one with all the power. I chose to just take a spoonful at a time and drizzle my cookies. To completely glaze, I suppose you could put the goop into a piping bag or dip them in the goop, but you'd need to make a lot of goop for this to happen. I may double my goop recipe next time just to have goop to dip my cookies in to. Goop is a really unappetizing word now that I think about it. Apologizes, the term 'goop' does not do this sweet frosting justice. Dripping sugar crack? That's more like it.

There goes the mouth watering...

I finally ended up having to replace my vanilla sugar scent wax cubes with something less edible...plumeria blossom. House smells good, and I manage to make it through the kitchen without eating ten of these cookies. I am trying to ration them out, but I'm not sure I really understand the definition of the word "ration" so well because somehow justifying eating these three at a time just doesn't seem that "rational." Til next time, my fellow eaters!