Mini Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Icing

Hooray for breakfast! I could have breakfast food for breakfast, lunch and supper. Eggs (so versatile), fruit and juices, oatmeal, grits, potatoes and veggies. Then there’s the traditional breakfast meat choices of ham, sausage or…. BACON! (Can you tell which is my favorite?) And in my world, breakfast isn’t breakfast without bread or a pastry, such as scones, muffins or cinnamon rolls.

It seems that making dishes into tiny versions of themselves is very vogue now. Shot glass desserts, sliders and tapas are all the rage. Kristin, of Iowa Girl Eats, has brought her shrink-ray gun to the cinnamon roll and given us the mini version. They’re bite-sized and easy to pop into your mouth. This pin was on the Repinly.com top 5 list of the Food and Drink category for much of February, so I decided to give it a Test.

The ingredients are found in most kitchens. I had a little bottle of real maple syrup from the Cracker Barrel, so I thought this would be the perfect way to use it.

Here’s my “secret ingredient” time saving find – Pilsbury makes a Crescent Seamless Dough Sheet. It’s the same price as the regular crescent rolls, but saves the time of pinching the seams together, as Kristin’s recipe directs.

I rolled out the dough just a bit,

and cut it into two halves.

The recipe didn’t specify whether the butter was to be melted or softened when brushed onto the dough, so I did one half with softened butter

and the other half with melted butter.

Both halves got sprinkled with cinnamon,

and then sprinkled with brown sugar. There wasn’t a noticeable difference by the time the brown sugar was sprinkled onto the pastry.

Each half was rolled into a log.

Each log was cut into 8 pieces. I used a pizza cutter to make quick work of the cutting. It worked, but compressed the dough a bit.

The pieces were placed in the mini muffin tins, cut sides up,

then baked at 350 for 11 minutes.

While the cinnamon rolls were baking I made the Maple Icing.

Whisk the ingredients until smooth, and stir periodically to keep a crust from forming on top.

The mini cinnamon rolls are out of the oven and look like little rosettes.

Plated and glazed, they took about 5 minutes to disappear. They were wonderful paired with a cup of Starbucks Sumatra coffee.

 

Overall Rating: 5 Pins

Accuracy: The recipe didn’t specify whether the butter should be softened or melted when brushed onto the pastry, but there was no difference in taste or performance. The little pastries had nice flakey texture from the crescent roll dough, and the cinnamon sugar taste was like their super-sized cousins that you can get at the mall. I really liked extra layer of flavor that the maple icing gave.  5 Pins

Difficulty: I admit that I might have “cheated” a bit in using the dough sheet rather than the regular crescent roll dough. However, the time saved was maybe about 3 minutes. Kristen says “they’re really easy”, and she’s right. 5 Pins

Time: The prep took 10 minutes, and the bake time was 11 minutes. Total time was less than half an hour – 5 Pins.

Cost: If you don’t have real maple syrup, that would be the most expensive ingredient at roughly $8.00 for a smaller bottle. I imagine maple flavored breakfast syrup would work if you don’t want to spend that much. The crescent dough is roughly $2.50 or less if on sale. 5 Pins.

Practicality: These are wonderful as a weekend breakfast or brunch treat.  5 Pins