Passing on Traditions

Several months back while I was staying the weekend with my Granddad he mentioned to me that he liked cinnamon rolls. I filed that tidbit away, telling myself that I would bring my Granddad some of my homemade cinnamon rolls the next time I came to visit. In the end I actually fulfilled that promise to myself before my next visit when I sent a pan of cinnamon rolls out to Highland County with my parents.

When my parents returned home later that day my Mom very diplomatically told me that Granddad liked the cinnamon rolls I made, but that's not what he had wanted. What my Granddad was after was an old-timey cinnamon roll, HUH?!? I love baking and consider myself knowledgable on the subject, but I've never heard of that.

Sure I had, my Mom informed me, it just happens to be the very thing I had growing up whenever my Mom had leftover pie dough from a pie making day. That was an old-timey cinnamon roll I said.

Here I had gone to the effort of making sweet yeast dough and letting it rise for hours, then letting it rise some more before I baked it. When the very thing my Granddad wanted was a simple pie crust rolled out rectangularly, covered with butter, sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon and then rolled into a log. We then take the log and shape it into a wreath like circle and bake for a half an hour at 350 degrees. The brown sugar cinnamon melt into this delicious syrup that is set off by the flakey pie crust, and there you have it, an old-timey cinnamon roll.

The photo is of a old-timey cinnamon roll that my Mom made few weeks back. This is the creation just moments before it went into the oven.