My mother-in-law makes the best cinnamon rolls in the world. She does. Trust me. Forget those things you buy in the mall. If an international award for cinnamon rolls existed, she would win it. She has perfected her recipe over the course of many years, starting before she gave birth to my husband. She probably practiced kneading dough as a toddler.
My husband and I have tried to make cinnamon rolls many times. They usually turn out pretty good but hardly comparable to "The Cinnamon Rolls" as they are known in my house. I've given up.
Since I can't possibly compare with The Cinnamon Rolls, I decided to try Martha's Honey Buns. They look sort of like cinnamon rolls, but with honey. And, since I've nothing to compare them with, I'm thinking I'll be pretty satisfied with the results. (Low expectations are important here.)
First you make the dough, which is key to a tasty bun. This dough was kneaded mostly by my mixer's dough hook, which you can borrow if you want to go as Captain Hook for Halloween:
This is my dough fully kneaded, ready for rising:
I have to say I was pretty happy with this dough. It looked fabulous. It had great potential. It was a thing of beauty.
Give the dough an hour to rise and it should double in size. Mine performed beautifully. I was so proud of my dough I almost took a photo and sent it to Martha herself.
Martha calls for the dough to be divided into three balls. Seriously, my dough is so awesome. I'm pretty confident even my Mother-in-law would agree. Look at that:
This is probably the first time I've ever made dough that part of it didn't stick to the counter. I did a little dance around my kitchen when I was able to roll it out with ease:
Brush with honey and top with filling, then roll it up:
Pour the honey mixture into the pan, then put the sliced rolls, face down into the pan. My slices look like I cut them with a butter knife, but hey:
But after the dough rose again, they looked better:
And then it happened: the school called. My youngest daughter wasn't feeling well and I had to take her to the doctor. Also, it was nearly time to pick up my two oldest children from school. My plan was this: throw the honey buns in the oven, pick up sick kid, run to pick up the older kids from school, and then run home to take the buns out of the oven before heading to the doctor with all three.
It was a solid plan.
After picking up all three kids, I ran home. (No traffic! No train! Hurrah!!) When I opened the back door, however, smoke poured out of the house. The honey topping had bubbled over and had smoked up the whole house. My buns and glorious dough:
This is a really sad photo with the topping having frozen mid-drip:
The good thing is that the honey buns were still edible. The bad thing is that they were terrible.
Now: I really like sweets. There are few things that I have ever found too sweet for my tastes. That being admitted, these honey buns are too sweet. Once they cooled, the caramel/honey topping hardens into a taffy-like consistency that your dentist will have a hard time removing. It was sort of like chewing on sticky honeycomb, which later hardens into rubber cement.
It was all very sad. But at least my daughter is feeling better.
I still have two rolls of (beautiful!) dough that I will use for something else. Maybe I'll throw down some cinnamon and sugar and give my mother-in-law a run for her money. In fact, I'm going to call her and throw down the cinnamon-roll gauntlet....after about fifty or sixty years of practice.
I may have a very good chance of winning by then, given that she'd be about one hundred and twenty years old.
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