12 Days of Christmas // Day 3 // Cinnamon Roll Cookies

Ack! Welcome to the third day of the blog party! Go HERE to visit Faith's blog and see the list of bloggers posting today with their awesome Chritmas posts!!

So for this post...you all get to see me attempt to try a new recipe! I had actually seen my friend already try to make it, and since they looked so good I decided to try them myself. And yep...as is typical when I'm in the kitchen, I encountered problems. BIG ones. But anyway. You'll get to that later. So! Onto some Cinnamon Roll Cookies!

So to start you will need: 

2 1/4 cup Flour 

3/4 cup White Sugar

3/4 cup Butter

1 Egg

1/2 tsp of Baking Powder

aaaand

2 teaspoons Vanilla

Take the butter and sugar and mix it together. And then beat it. Very well.

You'll know you've beat it enough when it becomes lighter and fluffier. Something like this.

Drop in that egg and mix it up. One key thing when making cookies is to make sure you stir it enough...but not too much. Otherwise it'll get all doughy and icky.

Once that egg's stirred in, stir in that oh so good smelling but awful tasting vanilla.

Dump in the flour (ok so don't actually dump in the flour. I was in a hurry and dumped it and...yep! Got flour aaaaaallll over me. That was fun xD) Anywayyyy...stir that in until just incorporated.

My dough was extremely dry (I'm blaming the extreme cold outside and inside cause really, our house is like a fridge...might I even say freezer? in winter) soooo I used my fingers to bring the dough together.

Once you've got the dough together into a ball, cut it in half and then leave it to rest while you get your filling. I mean, they are cinnamon roll cookies, so of course it needs a filling! For anyone who's made cinnamon rolls before, you probably already know what's in here.

Sooooo you will need:

2 tablespoons Butter (sofftened or melted, whatever's easier for you)
1/4 cup white Sugar
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Gonna say now though...if you feel like you need more of any of those ingredients - go for it. I added more cinnamon to mine because *shrugs* You can never have too much cinnamon.

Excuse the peculiar rotation of my picture. Didn't quite upload properly xD)

Mix the cinnamon and sugar together and watch all those lovely swirls blend together.

Now for the fun part...aka the really messy part. Grab one of the balls of dough and place it on a mat or cutting board or parchment paper. Now, I tried it on a flexible cutting board we had - BIG mistake. My dough was waaaaay too crumbly and trying to roll it up was a HUGE mess because it kept cracking :/ SO...what I ended up doing was adding a liiiiitle water (very, very tiny bit) to my second ball of dough and letting it soften up a bit before rolling it out.

So yeah! Take a rolling pin and roll your dough out into a rectangle. Also...I reeeeaaaallly don't like it when recipes say by how many inches the length and width of said rectangle should be....because well...is it normal to have a ruler to measure your dough with or something? If it is...I shall admit then I am not normal. Cause yeahhhh....I've never rolled dough out exactly as the recipe says :P I just guesstimate. Since you're rolling UP the dough, you want to make sure it's not too thin otherwise you're gonna have a rather hard time.

Once the dough's rolled out to your desired thickness, length, and width, spread half of the butter (remember you have another ball you gotta roll out) all over the dough.

Then sprinkle on the cinnamon-sugar! Don't forget the edges...they don't want to be left out. 

Aaaannddd...as I mentioned earlier, after this you roll your dough up just like a cinnamon roll. Start at one end of the dough and begin to roll it up, moving along the dough until one roll is complete, and then going back over to do it. Rolling it tightly is KEY for the cookies to come out properly.

And taking a short break from ingredient pictures to show you my dear sister's face as she watched me dispair over my first roll since it cracked all the way up to the end xD

This here's the second ball of dough...softened and rolled out a liiiitle thicker than the second one. Also placed it on parchment paper which helps soooo much. It rolled waaaay better too.

After you've got your dough all rolled up, place it in the fridge and let it chill. For some recipes, you can skip the chilling, but for these ones, you MUST chill the dough. Otherwise you will completely lose the shape of your dough.

It also helps sooo much when you cut out your dough since it's all nice and firm. I think this was my favourite part of the recipe...cutting the dough into nice little swirly circles. So fun!

Lay your cookies on a baking tray and stick them in an oven preheated to 350 degrees F for 10-12 minutes. 

Once they're brown underneath, you'll know they're done. 

Once they're cool, it's time for the next step that is crucial for any cinnamon roll to be a cinnamon roll. Don't know about you, but cinnamon rolls just aren't complete until they have...

ICING. Your icing is pretty simple to make, just milk and icing sugar and a little vanilla if you want it. Watch the consistency of your icing though, too thick and it won't drizzle nicely, but too thin and it'll just become invisible on your cookie! It must be just right, as Baby Bear would say ;)

And there! You're done! They make a great cookie for parties or just a snack at home! I was able to bring them to our church youth Christmas party, which was sooo fun ^_^

Let me know if you try this recipe at home! I'd love to see pictures of them :D And let me know how the rolling goes ;)

Do you like frosting on cinnamon roll cookies? 

What's one of your favourite Christmas cookies? 

You ready for Christmas??

10 More Days to Go!!!