Last month I began this baking challenge at Sally’s Baking Addiction. In February we made Molten Lava Cakes, and this month Sally’s challenge recipe is Sky High Chocolate Mousse Pie, in honor of π day on 3/14. You can find that recipe here. The pie recipe looked amazing, but my family is not a pie kinda crew. Fortunately, Sally always provides an alternative challenge each month (for the weirdos like us!). This month I made her Cinnamon Roll Cookies, and I am really glad I did! These cookies are really simple to make, I am so impressed by the sugar cookie dough that I intend to use it for the butterfly cookies I make each spring (more on those next month!)

The cookie dough is rather straight forward. Combine the dry ingredients and set aside. Begin by creaming the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. I did make one small tweak here and used vanilla sugar instead of plain granulated sugar because I always keep a jar of vanilla sugar handy for sweet recipes. After the creaming process the egg and vanilla were added, followed by the dry ingredients.

The dough came together quickly and was the perfect consistency for the next step

The recipe stated that the dough was to be divided into two equal parts. The total weight of the mixture was 1 lb 8 oz, so each half was 12 oz. Each portion was to be rolled out, on a floured parchment, in a 9in x 7in rectangle. I like to measure my dimensions onto the paper, then flip it over so the ink will not transfer onto the cookie dough

Then it is just a matter of working the dough into the pattern.

Next the filling layer is applied. The mixture consisted of melted butter, cinnamon and more vanilla sugar.

At this point it does resemble an actual yeasted cinnamon roll product. Starting with the long side, the dough is rolled into a cylinder. The process is repeated with the second portion of the dough and both “logs” are covered and chilled for, at least, 2 hours. The chilling process makes the cookies quite easy to slice and place on a parchment lined baking sheet.

The pans went into a preheated 375F oven for ~12 minutes, or until light brown on both sides. I had a yield of 32 cookies (16 per pan)

All cinnamon rolls need icing! This was another area where I made a couple changes. The icing was made with powdered sugar, milk, 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon extract and the caviar of 1/2 of a vanilla bean pod. I wanted to really bring home the cinnamon flavor and I really like the look of the small specks of vanilla seeds in the icing.

All that was left to do was to take their beauty shots! I tried to incorporate some of the lessons I learned from my food photography class.

Oh we ate a lot of them! A truly delicious cookie, and a recipe that I will be making again! Check out Sally’s website, Facebook and blog for more wonderful cookie ideas!