Hello Hello!

By no means would I call myself a trend-follower, trend-setter, nor would I ever put the words “Sophie” and “trend” in the same sentence. Ever. However, my sister, Z, is up to date on food trends, and she told me about a super fun idea I couldn’t resist! Tiny food cereal. The idea is that you take any food, make it tiny, and boom! It’s cereal. Cinnamon buns are some of my favorite treats, but who has time for bread? In this recipe, I came up with a super quick shortcut to cut down on time, and a simple fix to your cinnamon bun rolling mistakes!

Cinnamon

Cinnamomum loureiroi, or Vietnamese cinnamon, is one of the strongest kinds of cinnamon out there, one of the Cassia Cinnamons [1]. Cinnamon in general is a spice that is found in almost any kitchen, and if you don’t have Vietnamese, don’t worry, any cinnamon should do. We always have cinnamon around in our house. The only time we wouldn’t is if we happen to run out. That doesn’t even happen often, because we usually have backups anyways! Cinnamon usually goes with apples, pears, yogurt, oatmeal…. I would argue any sweet treat. Sometimes, people use it in savory recipes as well! We’re showcasing cinnamon by itself today, with vanilla, sugar, and butter –all the good stuff!

Cinnamon Buns and Snickerdoodles

“Buns” is probably not the right word for this snack. We made these cinnamon “buns” as cookies, not bread, because who has time for bread? That said, this is not a very well-balanced breakfast, I would recommend it as a snack or dessert. Trust me, it’ll save you the lecture from your parents. 

So I have to admit, the snickerdoodles were not part of the original plan. I was going to make a whole recipe of cinnamon buns, swirly, perfect, and cute. Well, I was overconfident, and obviously, not every roll turned out well. To fix my mistakes, all I did was roll up my messy buns into a smooth dough and baked them. Poof! Cinnamon buns turned into snickerdoodles! Magic. The recipe is down below!

See you all next Monday with a new savory snack!

Spice Girl

Recipe

Makes: 4 servings

Prep Time: 30 minutes

Cook Time: 5 minutes

Difficulty: Medium 

Ingredients: Filling

-1 stick of butter, divided in two

-2 tablespoons brown sugar

-½ teaspoon cinnamon

Ingredients: Cookie/cereal

-¼ cup of sugar

-¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

-¼ of an egg (I know, impossible, but don’t worry! Use your best estimate and save the rest, we might need it!)

-⅔ cup + a teaspoon of flour, plus more for bench

-¼ teaspoon baking soda

-⅛ teaspoon baking powder

-A pinch of salt, for preserving

1. Melt your butter and set half aside for the cookies. Add brown sugar and cinnamon into the remaining half.
2. For the cookies, mix the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt) in a large bowl. Mix wet ingredients (sugar, vanilla, egg) separately. Combine the two mixtures in the dry bowl. If the mixture is too crumbly, add in more egg. Be careful, though! You don’t want to put in more than ½ of the egg total. When I made this recipe, I used closer to ½ an egg. 
3. Use hands to mold the dough. I learned that the more you mix, the easier it is to roll out. The warmth from your hands will help!  To test the form of the dough, roll a good-sized section in your hands. If the ball looks smooth, it’s time to roll it out! If it crumbles, mix it a little longer.
4. Roll out the dough very thin. Cut the dough into thin strips, about 2 inches by 1 inch wide. Put in your filling and roll, rolling from the long side so that you have a longer, skinnier, log. The finished rolls s
   hould be about the size of a dime.
5. Cut the log into ⅓ inch tall disks using floss or the thinnest string you can find. To do this, wrap the string around the whole body of the log. Once the string is all the way around and intersects itself, pull the ends of the string towards each other so that the center isn’t smooshed and wonky. If this turns out badly, you can always mix the filling and cookie dough together to make snickerdoodles!
6. Place in the oven at 375 degrees Fahrenheit for five minutes. Because they are very small, these rolls have a short baking time! They will spread a little bit in the oven, making them closer to the size of a quarter.
7. Let the buns, then you can enjoy this treat with milk or another favorite beverage!

[1] Cassia cinnamon is more potent than ceylon. I love it for the more bitter taste compared to the citrus-y taste of ceylon, also known as “true cinnamon.” Ceylon cinnamon is found in the inner bark of the Cinnamomum Verum tree. It is less common, more expensive, and healthier than cassia. Cassia has its distinctive taste because it contains more of the compound coumarin than ceylon does. Coumarin is a natural blood thinner and could damage your liver if eaten in high doses. It is recommended to eat less than ½ a teaspoon of cinnamon a day. It is okay to use once in a while, but if you want to use cinnamon often, I recommend finding that ceylon cinnamon!