Fall baking

Sometimes you come across a recipe that looks fantastic, but the timing isn't quite right for it. Maybe you're too busy, or it's too much work, or you don't feel comfortable deep frying things even if it means those things will result in homemade chocolate creme filled doughnuts. So you bookmark, or in my case Evernote the recipe and swear come back to it. For example, I saw this recipe for pumpkin challah on WhatJewWannaEat around Rosh Hashana. I wanted to bake it immediately - pumpkin? challah? 2 of my favorite fall foods - but I didn't have the time and we're still rocking temps in the low 100s. It's hard to get excited about spicy, savory fall flavors when it's that hot and you can't bear the thought of turning on the oven.

But every now and then you get a recipe (and temps in the 80s. 80s! It's almost sweater season!) that just screams "bake me now!". Yeah, it's a little bit like your loved one showing up at your house in naught but a trench coat. No matter what else you had planned, you know in that moment that everything else is off the table.

This is what happened when Smitten Kitchen posted a recipe for pumpkin cinnamon rolls.

I thought about saving these for later, but at 6 last night I was running out for cream cheese and butter.

The recipe is pretty easy to follow - although as is standard with me and yeast doughs, I was worried I ruined the dough. I decided to make a 1/2 recipe and the dough was too short for my dough hook. I made some mods as follows:

-1/2 recipe. Use the paddle in your mix master on "stir" if making a 1/2 batch.
-added a full egg, 2 Tbl milk. I need more moisture in the dough in this environment.
-dough took 2.25 hours to double.
-rather than use a rolling pin, I patted it into a 8x11 in rectangle (despite being sticky, this was really easy)
-baking took 30 min.
-no powdered sugar or vanilla, so  whizzed my remaining 3/4c of white sugar in the blender for the icing and added a dash of maple syrup.
-9 rolls fit nicely in my new Emile Henry baking dish (thanks, Kitkat!) without getting squished. Truth be told, they're a bit on the small side, so L and I had one regular roll and split a smaller end piece for breakfast.

Pumpkin cinnamon roll + verve coffee = heaven

These are amazing. Hands down my new favorite cinnamon roll (though I don't actually make rolls that often, maybe once a year?).

Here are some additional mods I think would work well:

-1/2 white and 1/2 white whole wheat or WWpastry flour would be interesting to try and up the health quotient

-I only needed 1 Tbl butter for the filling. I'd consider adding 1/8 -1/4 c. apple sauce and cutting down a bit on the sugar. This would also make them slightly "healthier" (still bearing in mind they are cinnamon rolls)

-1/2 the amount of icing.