Christmas breakfast

Since it's our first year as a family with a kid I wanted to start some traditions to carry on throughout Palmer's childhood. Christmas breakfast seemed like a great place to start! I saw a recipe for cinnamon rolls on The Pioneer Woman's show on food network, then looked it up again later on her blog. If you are going to make them, the things you might not have in the pantry that you'll need for this recipe are maple extract, yeast, and whole milk!

After Christmas Eve service at church and hanging out in Plano for a couple hours, I came home to make a mess of my clean-ish kitchen to make the dough! You do a little work on the stovetop, then there are a few periods of downtime for the mixture to cool and the yeasty dough to rise between addings of flour and such. These breaks were perfect for present opening for Tyler and me! Shh, Palmer isn't old enough to realize we cheated :) (For the past few years we have been swapping presents on Christmas Eve. . . or earlier. . . but I guess that tradition will have to stop once our kids get old enough to question it!)

You can use the dough right away, but I decided to save the roll-making for the morning. It was gloriously risen and surprisingly easy to roll out straight from the fridge. I thought it would be much stickier! I did a "half" recipe. Half, which makes FOUR pans. Anyway, half a recipe makes one large buttery, sugary, cinnamony log that slices up so pretty!

This is before they were allowed to rise in the pan (after I put them in the oven for 5 accidental seconds, glanced at my recipe, and threw them OUT of the oven when I realized my error). They puffed up after about 30 minutes of rest, and baked to a beautiful bronze!

I had the frosting ready to drizzle on the hot rolls, according to Ree's instructions, and OH BOY were they good. I'm not even that into sweet breakfast (meaning I can't put away a whole pan of Pillsbury Grands like my husband can) and I very much enjoyed these! Don't get me wrong, they are plenty sweet. The texture of the rolls was perfect and I loved the flavor that the coffee and maple extract gave the frosting- all in all, superb! It will be even more fun to make them again next year :)