When the Pioneer Woman (What, I'm mentioning her again? Unheard of!) recently posted variations of her famous cinnamon roll recipe, I became a bit more excited to try this out. Because, really, what's better than taking on an intimidating recipe than taking on TWO intimidating recipes in one?
But first, let me backtrack a bit since one cannot live on sweet rolls for breakfast alone. Maybe you'd like to, but you really shouldn't. You shouldn't live on pancakes alone, either, but they're fantastic once in a while. Unless you've had gastric bypass and they tend to feel like half a brick in your stomach because the primary ingredient is white flour, which you then mix with sugar (and other things) and later top with butter. While yummy, it just doesn't add up to a breakfast that makes my tummy happy.
Then I got The Pioneer Woman's cookbook and came across Edna Mae's Sour Cream Pancakes recipe (Edna Mae being the Marlboro Man's grandmother). Instead of flour, the primary ingredient is (spoiler alert) sour cream! The recipe, which PW said makes 12-14 pancakes but yielded me 9, only has 7 tablespoons of flour and one tablespoon of sugar.
The result is a light, fluffy, airy pancake that holds up well to syrup or jam. (Am I the only one who puts jelly or jam on pancakes? It's something my dad does and I wonder if other people do, too, or if it's a holdover of his from growing up in Sweden?) The hubby makes fun of how much syrup I use, but I love it (and I use Splenda-sweetened, of course - real maple syrup does not sit well with me - even worse than Sprite).
So along with her egg-in-a-hole recipe, this has made the list of my favorite breakfasts. I hate sour cream on its own, but it is simply magical here.
Now back to those cinnamon rolls. When I first showed my mom The Pioneer Woman's cookbook (copies of which she has now purchased for herself and her best friend), she requested I make the cinnamon rolls for her next coffee hour at church. Oh sure, one of the most intimidating recipes in the book? Suuure, no problem.
Eep.
But after I made the first batch, I have to say - I forgot what was so intimidating, really. Sure, it uses a ton of butter and I made a mess of my kitchen floor. Sure, I suck at rolling out dough and then rolling it up, too. But I made it through, both the cinnamon roll batch and the chocolate chip cookie sweet roll batch.
I told my parents how the Pioneer Woman wrote that her church coffee hour used to be called Linger Longer, and they really liked that idea, so Sunday night I got an email of photos titled "Linger Longer Coffee Hour". I was recovering from Danielle's bachelorette party and was really pleased to hear that the rolls were such a hit that people came back afterwards to pack up the extras to take home with them and that everyone liked the idea of calling Coffee Hour "Linger Longer".
And the PW obsession spreads...
Mmm, sugary frosting goodness - the darker rolls are the maple cinnamon
and the rolls with the white frosting are the chocolate chip sweet rolls
I have to say, I liked the chocolate chip rolls better than the cinnamon ones, although I literally could only eat one bite of the chocolate chip roll before starting to feel the sugar rush. But it was one heck of a single bite.
Next up? My PW enchiladas attempt. We're going from flour and butter/sugar mixture on the floor to canola oil and enchilada sauce on the floor. My Swiffer hates this project.
