Christmas Cinnamon Rolls

I need to write this post because I will almost certainly forget the recipe. Hopefully, when Tom says he'd like cinnamon rolls for Christmas-day-breakfast next year, my internet searching will lead me back here.

Tana Ramsay's Family Kitchen contains a recipe for Danish Pastry Pizzas (a.k.a. "pizza snails", in our house). It's a bread dough, spread with pizza toppings, rolled up like a swiss roll, and sliced into spirals. These are baked, and make individual rolls, which are perfect for packed lunches, picnics, and snacks.

I wondered if using cinnamon sugar instead of pizza toppings might work. It isn't an enriched bread dough, but the results are still really good, especially when eaten fresh and warm :-)

Tana's dough recipe:
300g strong white flour
1 tsp fast-acting yeast
1/2 tsp caster sugar (or a bit more, for cinnamon rolls)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbsp oil (sunflower's probably better than olive oil for sweet recipes)
200ml tepid water

for pizza rolls:
4 tbsp passata
100g ham
1tsp oregano
125g grated mozzarella
salt & pepper

for cinnamon rolls:
30g melted butter
half a cup soft brown sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
(you could add dried fruit & glacé cherries. or chocolate)

• I use an electric food mixer to make the dough, so just add all the ingredients and switch it on. 
• Once mixed and kneaded, leave the dough to rise for 40 minutes, by which time it will have almost doubled in size.
• Punch the dough down and roll it into a rectangle the size of a large chopping board (40x25cm). (dried fruit, glacé cherries & chocolate can be kneaded into the dough at this stage)
• Spread the filling ingredients evenly over the dough (passata, then ham, herbs, mozzarella and seasoning, or melted butter then cinnamon sugar mixture and any extras), and roll it up like a swiss roll, starting at one of the long edges. 
• Cut it into 12 pieces, and put them onto a lined baking tray spiral-side up.  I like the cinnamon rolls to stick together as they cook, so put them close together in a buttered lasagne dish. Pizzas work better spaced out, so that they are still individual portions when they expand. 
• Cover the rolls with oiled clingfilm and leave to rise while you preheat the oven to 180C (...or while you go out to a toddler group. or overnight in the fridge on Christmas Eve). 
• Brush the tops with milk, and bake for 20-25 minutes. 

I went a bit overboard with making these, so ended up with stale leftovers, -which made a fantastic bread and butter pudding.