All things Cinnamon

I am back! Well, at least for the time being until things get hectic again. It has been one ultra stressful semester. I am barely treading water at work and school. All the commuting back and forth is killing me and my poor Honda. It has been a while since I posted so I figured I better break my hiatus. I've been lazy about posting more than anything. Still baking, once a week or every other week.

I've been on a huge cinnamon kick since my trip to Pittsburgh in August. I picked up a couple of bags of Hershey's cinnamon chips (can't get them around here) and have been baking all sorts of goodies with cinnamon (not necessarily with cinnamon chips). Right now I am on a big cinnamon roll kick. I baked pecan sticky buns too but have more of a hankering for cinnamon rolls. I tried the Cinnamon Buns recipe from The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion and Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. The recipe from BBA is better. The rolls were not too rich but not too bread like tasting either. Very satisfying. The dough is very similar to a recipe for sticky cinnamon rolls from Farm Journal's Homemade Breads. I have yet to try the recipe from the Farm Journal but will have to do so to compare. Both use shortening which I have never seen in a recipe for cinnamon rolls, but no worries the shortening obviously works since the rolls were terrific. I won't bother posting the BBA recipe here since it is all over the Internet. It was September's Daring Bakers Challenge (I haven't joined yet but may once the semester is over). Check out Pip in the City for the recipe. I will post the recipe from the Farm Journal when I try it. Maybe this weekend. The pics below are BBA cinnamon rolls. Yes, I like icing. I use ~2 C. powder sugar with about 4-5 tbsp of milk. Use more or less milk depending on the consistency you want for the icing.