Rolling in the Deep Dish Cinnamon Rolls

These cinnamon rolls are not good for you. In fact, they are actively bad for you. But they're cinnamon rolls, so they're SUPPOSED to be wicked awful for your health. Makes it so that you won't make them terribly often, which you wouldn't anyway because honestly this recipe is pretty long and kind of a pain in the neck (for all that it's not all that difficult).

You can easily double the recipe for more cinnamon rolls, and if you do so, just use a 13x9" pan. Yes, this makes a casserole dish-size serving if doubled.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go DDR off all the cinnamon rolls I'm about to eat. /caloric guilt

Rolling in the Deep Dish Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients
Total butter needed: 8 tbsp (1 stick)
Total sugar needed: 8 1/2 tsp (or 2 tbsp 2 1/2 tsp)
Total cinnamon needed: 1 1/4 tsp
Total time needed: 2 hours
Total yield: 24 cinnamon rolls

1 cup warm water
1 1/8 tsp yeast
 2 tsp white sugar

1 1/2 cups flour, added separately
1 1/2 tsp white sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tbsp melted butter

1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp melted butter (HOT)

2 tsp white sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tbsp melted butter (HOT)

Instructions

- Whisk together the water, yeast, and 2 tsp white sugar
- Let that sit for 10 minutes, then whisk it again.

- Add in 1/2 cup flour, 1/2 tsp cinnamon, 1 1/2 tsp white sugar, and 2 tbsp melted butter.
- Mix all that up, add in another 1/2 cup of flour. Work it in.
- The last 1/2 cup flour won't go in nicely. Do your best, leave the rest behind. You'll use it later.
- Roll the dough into a ball and smear it with what's left of the butter you melted before.
- Place it in a cereal bowl (which you can grease with a bit of butter as well if you'd like) and cover it with a small plate, placed upside down.
- Set it someplace warm (I put it over the heat-vent in the winter) and let it rise for 1 hour.

- Punch to dough once 'cause you can.
- Remember the leftover flour that wouldn't go into the dough-ball? Use that to dust your rolling surface.

- Roll the dough out as thin as you can (like 1/4"), keep it as rectangular as you can, but don't work too hard.
- Mix together 4 tbsp melted butter (keep it HOT), 3/8 cup white sugar (that's 1/4 + 1/8 cups), and 1 tbsp  cinnamon.
- Pour that in the middle of the dough, then use a spatula to smear it all over, all the way to the edges
- Cut the dough in half at its thinner point (so if it's 3x4, cut it so it's 3x2, savvy?).
- Roll those into two rolls, as tight as you can. If you can start rolling from the line you cut, you'll get prettier rolls, but it hardly matters.

- This is the part where you can preheat the oven  to 425*F.
- Melt 1 tbsp butter and mix it with 1 tbsp white sugar and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Again, you want it pretty hot (liquid).
- Smear that on the bottom of a 9" round baking pan. Keep the pan close.
- Dip your fingers into the pan (they're probably covered in cinnamon sugar butter anyway) and smear that stuff all over the rolls you made.
- Using a serrated knife, cut each roll in quarters, then each quarter into thirds (you should have 12 pieces from each roll, is what I'm saying).

- Arrange the pieces in the pan so that they're close but not touching each other. I got two rings with two pieces in the center when I did this.
- Melt 1 tbsp butter and mix it with 2 tsp white sugar and 1/4 tsp cinnamon. You want it hot and liquid-y again because ...
- Pour that noise over the rolls, aiming so that it bulls-eyes each roll.

- At this point, there's really nothing we can do to make these things any more awful for the human body, so let's just stuff them in the oven.
- Bake 15  minutes until golden brown. Peek in on them every so often. It's truly a sight to behold.

- Let 'em sit maybe 5 minutes, then loosen around the edges with a spatula.
- Put a dinner plate over the top, then turn the pan over. They should mostly kind of fall out nicely. Kind of.

I ate one. And then a second one. Then David and I split a third. Then we had another after breakfast. And now, I'm sitting here ignoring Expendables 2 and typing this up so I don't go in and EAT ALL THE REST OF THE STUPID THINGS BECAUSE THEY ARE SORT OF CRACK COCAINE OOPS.

Also, Expendables 2 was pretty awful, but not as bad as the first one, and it was so nice to see an established gay couple in a muscle-man action flick that I'm not even going to complain. Much. Here.

EDIT: Update, there are TWO established gay couples in the Expendables franchise, and the third movie didn't rot my soul with awfulness. I'll take it!

And yay sweet rolls!