Mini Cinnamon Rolls

In honor of the MN State Fair starting last week, Zoë Francois, one of the authors of Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking (a book that many of us have come to love), posted a how-to for mini cinnamon rolls on-a-stick. Since I had some buttermilk dough in the refrigerator (I do most of the time) I figured it would be a perfect Sunday morning breakfast treat.

(I serve my mini cinnamon rolls with the mini melon we got in the CSA box, does that make this a mini breakfast?)

Having the dough ready made these tasty little treats come together in no time at all. I started with 6-oz of buttermilk bread dough (the same dough I use for hamburger buns) which I rolled out to a 1/4-inch rectangle that was 4 inches on the longest side. Then I sprinkled 2 T of brown sugar & 1/T of cinnamon on top leaving a half inch on the edge.

I rolled that up into a log & cut it into eight 1/2-inch slices.

Each slice went into a non-stick mini muffin tin. Zoë didn't say anything about letting them rise but I figured an hour couldn't hurt them. Here they are nice & puffy & ready for the oven.

I baked them at 350 F for 15 minutes. I removed them to the plate right away (she warns to do this before the caramel hardens). For an icing I just mixed together a little powdered sugar & milk.

The bread is quite different than the cinnamon rolls you get at a bakery. That bread is typically really soft where this has a little crust on the outside. The flavor was amazing & these little two-biters really hit the spot. We decided to leave them off the stick since we had had our fill of food on-a-stick at the fair. I'm so glad Zoë shared the technique!