This time…

I didn’t have too much time to bake anything, so I decided to try baking some cinnamon bun cookies.

Here is the recipe link: https://www.iheartnaptime.net/cinnamon-roll-sugar-cookies/

Actually, I was pretty surprised that the recipe took a lot longer than I expected it to be. I had to chill the dough in the fridge for 30 minutes.

The dough was a lot thicker than some other cookie recipes I baked in the past.

Ingredients in the bowl before mixing

After mixing the ingredients together it was time to put the dough into the fridge to chill for half an hour.

Time to go into the fridge

While the dough chilled, I decided to make the cream cheese icing that the cookie dough recipe came with. I decided to halve the icing recipe so that some of the cookies aren’t as sweet for middle aged people, like my mom.

For the icing, I used cream cheese, butter, icing sugar , vanilla extract, and some milk. While I was making the icing, I decided to try some and it was very tasty.

a tiny amount of icing in a large bowl

After the dough finished baking, I left them on a cooling rack to cool down. After that, I finished icing them. Since I couldn’t find any piping bags I decided to use a Ziploc bag with a hole cut in the corner.

Cookies without icing
Iced cookies

I think I did pretty good on this recipe, because the cookies tasted and looked not too bad. As you can see, I don’t have much expertise using icing due to a lack of experience. The icing was wonderful, but the cookies were kind of dense and I think the cookies could’ve used more cinnamon in them. I also forgot to sprinkle cinnamon over the fresh icing, so that might have something to do with it. In conclusion, I think this recipe was pretty sucessful, yet it was kind of time consuming.

Things that suprised me

SO, for this Genius Hour week I baked some cinnamon buns, because I am trying to learn how to bake a variety of pastries. The recipe I followed was created by Julie Van Rosendaal, and it said to bake the cinnamon buns in the oven for 15-18 minutes. I was surprised that this time isn’t actually long enough to make the buns have a “golden” color, and the buns were more pasty white.

What I did

As stated previously, I was going to learn how to bake for my Genius Hour Project. yesterday I baked the cinnamon buns, and they turned out ok.

That is what they ended up looking like. I think the taste was fine, but some things that I think can be improved are the cutting of the cinnamon buns because they were kinda uneven and rolling them, because as I was rolling the dough, it kinda started to fall apart. Also, the end piece of the dough (top left one in the corner) didn’t have too much of the cinnamon filling in it. Next time I might have to bake the cinnamon rolls for a bit longer than the recommended 20 minutes, cause they seem a little undercooked.

I ate one not too long after and I thought it had a decent level of sweetness.

I think I should definitely try to bake this specific recipe again later in this project.

-Caitlin

Genius Hour Planning

For my Genius Hour Project I think I will either do bake cinnamon rolls and other types of related food.

  1. For my Genius Hour Projecty I want to specifically bake rolls and other cinnamon roll-like food because whenever I go to a bakery I usually order some type of cinnamon roll, and I have baked other types of desserts in tha past, but I’ve never tried to bake cinnamon rolls.
  2. If I achieve my goal, I should be able to bake tasty cinnamon rolls, and not run into any major problems while baking.
  3. To get to being able to bake cinnamon rolls, I will look at recipes on Pinterest and maybe watch some tutorials on Youtube if I need to.
  4. For baking I’ll probably need basic baking supplies, like flour, sugar, salt, etc. I will probably need a pan to bake the rolls in.
  5. I might need help with getting baking supplies from a grocery store, if I need them, and taste testing the cinnamon rolls so I can know more opinions and what I need to immprove or try differently. And maybe for using the oven, ’cause for some reason I have an irrationial fear of falling into it(like the with from Hansel and Gretel)…