Mother's Day

Emily is going to be 3 in June, so she is still figuring out what all of the various holidays are and what you are supposed to do on them. When we first started talking about Mother's Day, she corrected me and told her that it was "Emily's Day." Which, I guess, without her, I wouldn't be able to celebrate my own Mother's Day so I guess she sorta had a point. Anyway, we finally got her to understand that the day was a day to be nice to mommy. Given that she has 2 mommies, that's no small feat! She made/colored in our cards and gave me flowers. Her school did some cute things and overall it was a pretty low-key quiet day. One of the things I wanted of course, was breakfast. I mean, what Mom doesn't want her favorite breakfast on Mother's day. It's a chance to live a little, right?! Right!

This mom decided to take matters into her own hands to make one of my favorite things - cinnamon rolls.



I have only made from-scratch cinnamon rolls once and that was when I was little. I was visiting my grandma's house, and my Aunt Wendy was there (which is worth remembering in itself as I didn't see my Aunt Wendy too much growing up). My Aunt gathered me up and we headed into my grandma's delightfully sunny, yellow kitchen and she showed me how to make cinnamon rolls and sticky buns. I remember the process took a LOONG time, but the wait was totally worth it. I still remember kneading the dough, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for it to rise and the wonderful golden color when they came out of the oven. I couldn't have been more than 11. As an adult I've thought about making cinnamon rolls so many times, but I call up this experience and it just seemed so labor intensive, that I've always just settled for the pop-out-of-a-can variety. As Mother's Day approached this year, I thought that it would be a perfect time to try to make these again.

After not finding a recipe that caught my eye a few months ago, I settled for Paula Deen's cinnamon roll recipe. I mean, Paula is southern and for things that should be gooey and yummy and delicious, Paula is a no brainer. I used the recipe here, and made a few adjustments. First, I used my Kitchenaid mixer to mix, so kneading wasn't required. I used only half of the butter she called for when brushing the rolled dough with butter. I also used less white sugar and added about 1/3 cup brown sugar to the filling. I also used pecans in my filling. When it came time to frost the rolls, I found that I didn't need as much as the recipe made - I probably drizzled half of it over the finished rolls, but other than that I followed the recipe to a tee, and these were the most perfect, wonderful cinnamon rolls. The process is long, but it wasn't as hard as I remember and I will likely make these again, but split the time up by starting a day before I plan on serving so that it doesn't take 3 hours in the morning to make.