The smell and taste of cinnamon rolls is a favorite childhood memory. My grandmother made them nearly every day whenever we visited her. Since she didn’t use a fixed recipe, I once took copious notes as I watched – everything was by sight and texture, not teaspoons and ounces. The whole process seemed daunting to me.

But after discovering a wonderful bread machine recipe recently, I decided to try using it as a base for cinnamon rolls. The dough could be prepared by the machine, then I would make the rolls and bake them in the oven.

I modified the original recipe (which was in itself modified as described in the above-mentioned post) by adding another tablespoon of sugar.

After the bread machine created the dough, I used a rolling pin (for the first time in years) to flatten it out into a rectangle. It kept shrinking up again, but after much rolling – and much flour – it finally stayed put enough that I could smear some cinnamon sugar mixed with butter all over the top.

Then I rolled it up and cut it into seven equal pieces which I arranged somewhat haphazardly in a round stoneware pan. I’m hoping my technique improves with practice because them looked pretty sad at this point.

I let the rolls rise twenty minutes then bakes them at 350 till they looked like this:

I left them naked – no icing – so were just a bit sweet and not overwhelmingly so. That plus they’re half whole grain, which basically makes them a health food, right?

DELICIOUS!