In my mother’s dim view, any decent bread that comes out of my oven is a fluke. “Enjoy,” she had said to Jenny and Eva about the cinnamon rolls. “The next batch won’t be as good.”
She was right, but not by much, and only since I had the luxury of choosing between the two. For one, my KitchenAid suddenly stopped working mid-mix, so I had to finish the dough by hand. Along the way, I had this nagging suspicion that I had missed something — and indeed I had: I forgot to add water, although the dough somehow came together with just milk and did not seem to need the extra liquid.
If you ask me, the most important thing I learned from making superficially different versions of the same recipe was not to underestimate condensed milk as a glaze. I didn’t realize how good it was by itself until I tried to do a “sosyal” version for the second batch by adding cream cheese and butter, which was also good, but for the extra work (and expense) not much of an improvement.
Also, I opted to roll the subsequent version in the more traditional shape, the result being that the top crust didn’t develop a thin crisp shell like with the initial batch, which I had rolled into balls (see photo below). The bread turned out too soft (pillowy) for my taste, but some of my friends actually preferred it that way. And I should belatedly add I’m not exactly gaga over cinnamon rolls.
Then there’s my father. He doesn’t like cinnamon at all. And yet he gamely picked out the parts sans the spice and pronounced the bread good. Did a certain someone hear that? If you’re interested, see this recipe — it’s easy, and, unlike that certain someone, quite forgiving.
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