Weekend Kitchen. . .Cinnamon Rolls

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Last month while out in Arizona on vacation, my sister, brother, and I made cinnamon rolls.  And not just any cinnamon rolls, but The Pioneer Woman's  cinnamon rolls.  Yum.  These were delicious and I am wishing that I had some next to me right now!

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Ingredients:

- 1 quart Whole Milk

1 cup Vegetable Oil

1 cup Sugar

2 packages Active Dry Yeast

8 cups (Plus 1 Cup Extra, Separated) All-purpose Flour

1 teaspoon (heaping) Baking Powder

1 teaspoon (scant) Baking Soda

1 Tablespoon (heaping) Salt

Plenty Of Melted Butter

2 cups Sugar

Generous Sprinkling Of Cinnamon

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Maple Frosting Ingredients:

1 bag Powdered Sugar

2 teaspoons Maple Flavoring

½ cups Milk

¼ cups Melted Butter

¼ cups Brewed Coffee

⅛ teaspoons Salt

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{Baby Sister and World's Cutest Brother getting the dough started}
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1.  Mix the milk, vegetable oil and sugar in a pan. Scald the mixture (heat until just before the boiling point). Turn off heat and leave to cool 45 minutes to 1 hour. When the mixture is lukewarm to warm, but NOT hot, sprinkle in both packages of Active Dry Yeast. Let this sit for a minute. Then add 8 cups of all-purpose flour. Stir mixture together. Cover and let rise for at least an hour.
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2.  After rising for at least an hour, add 1 more cup of flour, the baking powder, baking soda and salt. Stir mixture together. (At this point, you could cover the dough and put it in the fridge until you need it – overnight or even a day or two, if necessary. Just keep your eye on it and if it starts to overflow out of the pan, just punch it down).  At this point, we put our dough in the refrigerator and came back to it int he morning.
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3.  When ready to prepare rolls: Sprinkle rolling surface generously with flour. Take half the dough and form a rough rectangle. Then roll the dough thin, maintaining a general rectangular shape. Drizzle 1/2 to 1 cup melted butter over the dough. Now sprinkle 1 cup of sugar over the butter followed by a generous sprinkling of cinnamon.
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{Pouring on the melted butter}
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{We used a pastry brush to spread around the butter.  Look at that crazy bed head on World's Cutest Brother!}
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{Time to add the sugar...}
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{...and the cinnamon}
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4.  Now, starting at the opposite end, begin rolling the dough in a neat line toward you. Keep the roll relatively tight as you go. Next, pinch the seam of the roll to seal it.
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5.  Spread 1 tablespoon of melted butter in a seven inch round foil cake or pie pan. Then begin cutting the rolls approximately ¾ to 1 inch thick and laying them in the buttered pans.
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6.  Repeat this process with the other half of the dough. Let the rolls rise for 20 to 30 minutes, then bake at 375 degrees until light golden brown, about 15 to 18 minutes.
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World's Cutest Brother took a scrap of dough and decided to make a few mini cinnamon rolls...
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He was quite pleased with himself.
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{Seriously, how cute are those little rolls???}
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Fresh out of the oven:
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7.  For the frosting, mix together all ingredients listed and stir well until smooth. It should be thick but pourable. Taste and adjust as needed. Generously drizzle over the warm rolls. Go crazy and don’t skimp on the frosting.

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Our finished rolls with frosting:
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Notes:
- Pioneer Woman recently posted tips on making her cinnamon rolls.  To see that post click here.
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- Our dough didn't seem to rise very much.  Not sure what happened but they did rise while they baked and tasted delicious to us!
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- We cut the recipe in half.  Although, the recipe listed above is Pioneer Woman's original recipe.
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- Because we cut the recipe in half, our rolls were a bit smalled than hers.  I didn't realize this at the time, but the recipe says to divide the dough in half before rolling out.  Well, we did divide ours in half, but didn't need to because we had cut the recipe in half!  Because of that, our rolls were smaller.
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- We ended up with four pans of rolls.  We baked two while we were there and put two in the freezer for our trip out there in December.  Our Dad is under very specific instructions to not bake the rolls without us!
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