Last weekend my in-laws came over to have breakfast with us before helping out on some stuff for our respective companies.  (Graham may have been replaced by his mother as the best assistant ever. He’s understandingly disappointed, but he’s hoping for other C-level opportunities inside the same company. For her party, Marcia may be promoted.)

Not sure what to make, and not too keen to venture over to the grocery store, I made cinnamon rolls with ingredients I had on hand. I mixed dough together Friday night using 1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour and 2 cups all purpose flour — a bold move considering I’d never eaten a whole wheat cinnamon roll and was going to be serving them to my in-laws.*  I really wasn’t sure how it would turn out.

* I should mention my sister-in-law is an award winning pastry chef and my mother-in-law an accomplished cook herself. I’m amateursville compared to these ladies.  AND YET, I make bold moves like whole wheat flour substitution, a move of distinct culinary chutzpah.

I let the dough rise overnight in the fridge; the next morning I got up early and rolled it out.

I’m a huge fan of Penzey’s Spices and they’ve got a huge collection of cinnamon varietals.  Have you ever compared cinnamon?  If not, you should. It’s a fun, enlightening activity (for kids and adults!) that’s really worthy of its own blog post. Anyway, I had Chinese Cassia, Ceylon, and Vietnamese cinnamon on hand.  Generally my favorite (hands down) is Vietnamese cinnamon, but I had a bottle of Chinese Cassia with a broken lid.  And since it’s recommended for cinnamon rolls anyway, that’s what I went with.

Had I to do it all over again, I’d double – maybe triple – the amount of cinnamon. Graham and I love tasting cinnamon rolls from everywhere we can, and one of our favorites is from – are you ready – IKEA.  Seriously.  It’s not the dough, which is somewhat bland and unmemorable; it’s not the icing, which is passable but not extraordinary.  It’s the liberal use of cinnamon that gives IKEA cinnamon rolls their real zing….. (And probably why they sell so many.  The siren call of cinnamon rolls cooking in IKEA while you shop. Brilliant!)

I had hazelnuts on hand from the holidays, so instead of Texas pecans or walnuts I added the leftover hazelnuts.  Not sure, I’d do that again because hazelnuts are so strong.  Paired with the whole wheat dough – itself a distinct flavor – the combination completely overpowers the already lacking cinnamon.

I also added golden raisins, mostly because that’s what we had.  (Must be economical!)  I didn’t notice a difference.

You can’t see it here, but it took me a bit to get the right thickness on cutting the cinnamon rolls. The recipe I followed directed me to cut the dough into 15 equal cuts, but I set aside a portion of the dough (there’s just so many cinnamon rolls 4 people should eat in the course of a week), so I wasn’t sure on the desired thickness. In the end, I was most pleased with a 1.5″ thickness.

Bake, bake, bake, bake – DING! The result:

We can’t forget the icing! I totally MADE UP my icing recipe using powdered sugar and leftover maple syrup – introducing yet a third distinct flavor to work with the whole wheat and hazelnuts. Maple’s probably great with whole wheat and cinnamon (for sure!), but again the hazelnuts hung us up here.  Also, because I free-formed the recipe, we could taste the powered sugar. I wonder if that’s why some recipes introduce vanilla and milk (sometimes even coffee!) into the icing recipe instead of just using powdered sugar and maple syrup.

Don’t my cinnamon rolls look yummy?!

There’s a lot of promise here.  The dough, first of all, is nice and flavorful.  My father-in-law’s first comment: “Marsh! They’re whole wheat!” I took that as a vote of confidence – no need to throw out the frozen portion of dough, though in future iterations I’ll have to come up with a way for it to be less “yeasty” as Graham put it.  The hazelnuts are a no-go.  Increase the cinnamon A LOT. Consider following a recipe for the maple icing.

Otherwise – hooray, cinnamon rolls!