Aunt Joans Cinnamon Rolls Recipes

AUNT JOAN'S CINNAMON ROLLS

Steps:

• Dough: Mix first ingredients (Yeast through Egg) with a spoon. Add in Flour gradually and then mix with your hands until you can knead the dough.
• Warm a bowl with hot water, dry and grease the bowl. Let the dough rise in the warmed, greased and covered bowl at room temperature until doubled.
• Make Topping: Cook sugar and butter until it is combined (in a pan on the stove). Take off the heat, add Caro Syrup and stir. Pour 1/2 syrup mixture into each greased 9X13 Pan. NOTE: don't cook this too long or too hard - you'll get a hard candy topping -- Joan cooked it for just a few minutes -- You can optionally add nuts to the topping. You can make the topping ahead of time and pour into the prepared pans while the dough is rising.
• Divide dough in half once doubled. Perform the following on each dough: Roll dough out oblong to about 12 X 18 inches. Spread milk over the dough with your fingers (1/8 C or so?) (note - some recipes call for using butter instead of milk - the milk does work fine though -- ) Sprinkle sugar and cinnamon over the dough. Can optionally add raisins. Roll up dough lengthwise. NOTE: First time I made these I used an unmeasured amount of cinnamon and sugar - sprinkled it on what I thought was liberally and it wasn't nearly enough. Researched cinnamon rolls on the internet and found 1C Sugar + 1 TBL cinnamon was a pretty common ingredient set in cinnamon rolls. I tried these amounts and the sugar melted out of the rolls when they cooked and left gaps in the rolls that I wasn't happy with. Next time will use between 1/2 - 3/4 C sugar and a slightly reduced amount of Cinnamon.
• Cut rolls about every 1 1/2 inches and place on top of syrup in pan. When you place the rolls, there will be big gaps between them - rolls will be 3 X 4 in the 9 X 12 pan. As they rolls rise the second time, these gaps will be filled in nicely. Let rise until "ready" (Second raise - maybe another 1/2 - 1 hour to hour depending on humidity levels?).
• Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. Important - Check the rolls about 20 minutes inches If the rolls on the edges start to brown and the middle looks not done - put tin foil over the rolls and cook a bit longer. Once all are done, run a spatula along the edge of the pan and then immediately turn out (with topping on top) onto a bread board, cookie sheet, foil or wax paper to cool completely (But not a cooling rack - you want to capture all of the topping!).
• Aunt Joan lets them cool completely and then wraps tightly in wrap (freezer paper / plastic combo) and puts most into the freezer now days as her kids are long ago grown and moved away. Believe me - even frozen and thawed these things ROCK. (of course, you could eat them right away ;).