Pecan Cinnamon Buns

This has been the summer of bread & cake making from scratch.  It began one morning in the early summer when Alex asked me to make pancakes for him.  Eager to please my recent graduate of Kindergarten, but lacking the staple box of Bisquick, I thought "wait a minute, can I make pancakes from scratch?".  So off I went to my trusty Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook and amidst the recipes for pancakes and waffles was a plethura of bread recipes.  I realized I'd never made any sort of bread from scratch which required the use of active yeast.  So I made the pancakes that morning and began a new challenge for myself, that of bread making.  That week we picked strawberries   and made jam (another first for us... the jam-making, that is).  Hmmm... now what will go well with fresh strawberry jam?  Aha!  Croissants!  How hard could those be to make?  Turns out, after searching online for a recipe, that in order to make a true croissant, it takes hours or prepping the dough and days of work.  I discovered why croissants are so buttery and flaky in layers.... purely the result of  "folding" the dough in layers of butter multiple times over the course of a day or so.   I found a recipe that was a nice compromise between the very first recipe and a no-labor required/open the tube and bake recipe for croissants.  The result was relatively time-consuming but wonderfully delicious!  I've tucked this recipe in my files under "worth the effort, but save for special occasion"!  

I had a packet of dry yeast in my fridge left over from the 3-pack I bought last month for the croissants that was screaming at me to be used, thus my project for today unfolded.  I debated on doing dinner rolls (which would have made 24 rolls and I would have ended up freezing some for later use) or cinnamon buns.  I'd never done either, but was hoping to make something with a punch of flavor.  Cinnamon rolls it is!  The thing that's nice about this recipe is that you can make the rolls ahead of time, plac

e them in their baking pan, cover and refrigerate them to bake the next morning.  I made a Caramel Pecan version this afternoon (which are SO YUMMY) and I have a batch ready for tomorrow's breakfast that will be the cinnamon with sugar glaze variety.  The recipe makes 24 buns, which is too much for us to eat, which is why I've saved half of them for tomorrow.  They end up baking relatively small, about 3 inches in diameter, so the 12 should be just about right for our appetites in the morning!