I love cinnamon rolls about as much as anything. My mother used to make them from the Pillsbury can & they were childhood gold. Most especially the center roll. This is the sort of recipe where editing the photos is painful because I start to crave them terribly all over again. They’re fluffy, soft, gooey, and perfect. And they’re easy. You can make them & cut them the night before Christmas, let them rise in the fridge over night, set them out about an hour before you want to bake them, and then pop them in the oven for warm, homemade cinnamon buns on Christmas morning. I recommend doing that. You should probably do that.
My dear friend Tiffany (of the killer blog Offbeat + Inspired) drove down and hung out with me the day I was making these and tons of the process shots below are her gorgeous photography, not mine. It was a beautiful day. We baked; we got coffee; we took photos, and I played dress up (for an upcoming winter worn post.) And I laughed. A lot. I mean…more than I can remember laughing with anyone in ages. It was beautiful delirium.
Friendship is bizarre. It’s still relatively new to me & it confounds me at times. People are so vastly different. We all tend to judge one another by, as my grandmother used to say, our “own half bushel”. Which is to say we just go around assuming everyone is like us. That’s a particularly bad idea when you’re as eccentric and arguably, at times, troubled as I am.
I have my darklings. I have my doubts. I have my grey, grey, grey. My fog. My black humor. My contradictions. And having a friend like Tiffany sit across from me and simply say “You’re doing the best you can given where you’re at & what you have” took so much weight off my shoulders. Sometimes I forget that I’m a bipolar addict that was just kind of thrown by grace into this brave, new world of friendship, sobriety, and good work. I get frustrated by my raucous energy, frustrated by my bland lethargy. Frustrated by the unpredictable swings.
And most especially frustrated when I fall back into the same old patterns in different colors. And the same old unwillingness to change. People like me guard our vices whether it’s chocolate, work, or dope. I can’t even think straight if I feel like someone wants to pry it—whatever “it” may be—out of my hands. It’s a lousy way to be, but sometimes it seems like the least I can do is to acknowledge my unwillingness, my powerlessness. That feels like the first feeble step towards change.
I’ve been blessed, it would seem, with an above average number of short comings. And I say that with no irony. I have lived wild stories because of my flaws. I don’t readily judge others because of my flaws. And I have had to seek conscious contact with a higher power because of my flaws. They have driven me to darkness; they have driven me to light. When you’re intimately acquainted with your own brokenness, you become intimately acquainted with healing. You get to know yourself in untold ways. You look strange creatures in the eye and lick your own blood off their fangs. There’s something fundamentally intimate about it all.
So thank you, Tiffany. Thank you for being my friend. And for being so, so funny. And for not flipping my dining room table over every time I said something mushy to you. Even though I know you wanted to! #ImRuiningIt!
And to all my other dear friends that have walked through the past couple years of awesome and weird and dumb with me…I love you guys. And to those of you that read this stuff & suspend judgment and maybe, maybe relate & don’t say things like “Ermahgerd like why would she post cinnamon buns for Christmas and mention bloody fangs in the same breath?!”… I love you too. Merry Christmas.
Ingredients
- 4 cups (500 g) flour, plus 1/4 cup for rolling out
- 1 1/4 cup (300 grams) eggnog, warm
- 1 packet (1/4 oz, 2 1/4 teaspoons) active dry yeast
- 1/4 cup (60 grams) creme fraiche
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 3/4 cup (150 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp smoked salt (or regular kosher salt)
- 1 stick unsalted butter, melted, browned, and warm
- 6 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
- 3/4 cup dark brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
- 1 tablespoon cinnamon (can increase to taste or omit)
- 8 oz creme fraiche
- 1 tablespoon good whiskey (optional)
- beans from one vanilla bean
- 1 cup powdered sugar, sifted
- 1 tablespoon eggnog
- 1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Instructions
- Warm the eggnog gently in a small pot until about the temperature of bathwater. Remove from heat and stir in the yeast. Allow to proof for five to ten minutes. It should be bubbly.
- While the yeast proofs melt & brown the butter. In a stainless steel skillet (I prefer these for browning butter because you can clearly see as it starts to brown), melt one stick of butter (113 grams) over medium heat, swirling the pan often. The butter will bubble, foam, and then brown. This should take about 5-10 minutes. Remember to swirl often. As soon as the butter is golden & smells toasty, pour it into a heat proof bowl. I pop this in the fridge for a few minutes, stirring occasionally, to take the heat off before adding it to my dough. It should be warm when you add it but not hot.
- In a large mixing bowl combine the yeast & eggnog mixture, the eggs, creme fraiche, sugar, nutmeg, vanilla, brown butter, and salt. Stir to combine well.
- Stir in the flour with a wooden spoon. I add about half, work it in, then add the other half. Stir pretty vigorously for about a minute or two. Or until you tire out, which is what I do. Make sure there are no dry bits left. Cover the bowl loosely with plastic wrap or a lightly floured kitchen towel. Leave in a warm place to proof until doubled in size, about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. I proof mine in my oven. I turn it on for about 30 second to a minute to warm up, then turn it off, put the dough in, and let it sit.
- After the dough has risen, sprinkle the additional 1/4 cup of flour onto a clean work surface. Turn the dough out and gently knead just enough of the flour in to get a workable dough. Pat it out into a rectangle about 9" x 12" with the narrow end facing away from you.
- In a bowl combine the dark brown sugar, nutmeg, and cinnamon (if using, I leave the cinnamon out because I want my rolls to taste like pure eggnog & I think cinnamon dominates...they're excellent both ways!).
- Smear the butter all over the surface of your rectangle, leaving about a 1" boarder. Sprinkle the brown sugar mixture evenly over the butter. Gently & mindfully roll the dough from right to left (or left to right...), and use your hands to shape it into a nice log if it gets a bit wonky. This is a soft dough.
- Using your finger pinch the dough to seal it well. Squish the dough into a nice log before proceeding.
- Using dental floss or fishing wire (I am serious here, don't use a knife...) cut the log into ten 1" or so rolls. Place them in two pie plates or into a 9" x 13" baking dish. Reshape rolls as needed after cutting as you place them.
- Cover loosely with plastic or a lightly floured kitchen towel. Allow to rise for about 45 minutes - 1 hour. At this point you can also cover them and place them in the fridge over night, up to about 16 hours. Bring them to room temperature before proceeding if you do.
- Halfway through the second rise, heat your oven to 350° F. When they are done rising, place them in the oven on the center rack and bake 20-25 minutes until golden (but not too dark!) and cooked through. Mine took about 22-23 minutes.
- Allow to cool fully before frosting. While they do said cooling...make your frosting!
- In a medium bowl whisk the creme fraiche together with the sifted powdered sugar, nutmeg, vanilla beans, whiskey, and eggnog. Feel free to leave the whiskey out, but it's a fun touch.
- Pour the icing generously over your cool rolls. Enjoy, messily. With either more eggnog or a cold glass of milk....best if on Christmas morning!
Your kitchen, your words, your hands, your recipe, your photography (and Tiffany’s); it’s all so overwhelmingly beautiful. And I think more than anything, I appreciate your honesty. Almost religiously reading your blog for the past year or so has helped me overcome my own pieces of mental detritus; accept the darkness, the light, and all the grey. I hope one day to move on with such grace as you, and to turn my past into something somewhat more beautiful. Thank you for all of this. Your recipes, your healing words, the fragments of beauty in your everyday life. Merry Christmas, Beth. May your days be light as your spirit is light. You certainly deserve it. xo
please write a book someday soon, not just a cookbook but one of your words. i swear you are a healer. reading your words, even if they are on food! find a way to tranquil me when i am in an erratic state. for this i am so thankful – you! happy holidays Beth.
That line about licking blood off of fangs… I read it over and over. So powerful.
Another one banging the drum for a cook book.
These look lovely and the recipe will be coming with me to Germany for my German Christmas.
So gorgeous (both in pictures and text)!
We love eating this, but always wondered how we could make the icing without a whole cup of sugar? Using jelly? Custard? Any ideas?
You can just cut back on the sugar. : ) I don’t always use the full cup. You can just sweeten it to taste.
But then it’d be too runny, and we don’t want that, do we? Maybe some “good” flour to hold the icing dense, like amaranth or something like that? If anyone has suggestions, we’re all ears!
Oh you mention your flaws and all I can see – from behind a screen and a world away – is a young girl so brave, so tough in her frailty, so eager to be good, to live, so open minded and open hearted, so so bloody brave. You’re so brave – and yep, I am being mushy and I don’t know you so I shouldn’t be, but hey, I relate. – it never ceases to amaze me. Whilst I just hide inside my cocoon of safety, you put yourself out there to the world. WHile because of your flaws you don’t judge others hastily, or maybe at all, I because of my many flaws judge them constantly, and ressent them for not seeing their flaws and not admiting their flaws and acting as if they are better than me when they have as many flaws. I wish I could be so brave and so open, and so eager to (re) discover friendship. I have not been through what you have been in life – nor have you been through what I have, we all fight different battles – and in no way have our lives been similar, and yet. And yet, whilst I am so utterly different from you and you from me, I relate to you and don’t even know why, and see we have common interests and ideas, and yet I see I have much to learn from you, despite my being much older. There are people who unwittingly touch us from worlds away – like Emily Brontë touched me, aha!! and Stephen King – and we cannot help but admire them from a distance. Thus said, those rolls had me salivating on IG and now here, and I so so wish I could make it to your workshop in Lisbon next year so I could learn from you, despite my being such an anticocial soul, but alas, somethings are not meant to be, yet I will be eager to see the pictures you take of the city where I was born, I am eager to see how you perceive that city that I find so familiar to the point of not even noticing its beauty and doubting there is such. And oh, I would pay to have these on my table at Christmas, I can even smell them from afar!!!
http://bloglairdutemps.blogspot.pt/
Great
The second to the last photo, with half of it pure darkness and a fragment of pure light is so gorgeous that it took my breath away. It’s also a perfect metaphor of walking through life after addiction, a premise of which I am well acquainted. Your writings resonate deep with me, especially of navigating friendships with a soul that was so battered and crushed by life that we smothered it with chemicals just to get through the hours. I’m always baffled, and awed by those around me who praise and honor my life as a friend, even though most of the time I still can’t figure the whole thing out. Still, they keep seeking me out, and I am drawn to their love and light, moth-like. One day at a time, right?
These look delicious, Beth! I might have to try these for Christmas morning! I agree with you in the friend department. It’s hard for women to make friends because we are so judgmental. I find I’m always drawn to my lifelong friends or the ones who maybe don’t have the same style as me – because then our friendship is authentic, not based on style.
Oh My Goodness!!!!! These look and sound delicious! I have a Wonderful bottle of a Smoky Whiskey that I will use for these.I plan on making them for our Christmas Morning.
I Love reading your blog and Love your Honesty.
These photos are Great!
I Wish you the Best!,
Diane M.
These look absolutely divine. Thank you for sharing this goodness!
Beth! You are a gem! Love all of this! Where is that hand on your window sill from?
The thought of you two together in the kitchen makes my heart so full! I love seeing your work and Tiffany’s side-by-side. These cinnamon rolls are my everything — brown butter, eggnog, whiskey frosting, oh my goodness. And thank you for your lovely words and the reminder that the our shortcomings have such great potential to become strengths. It was so wonderful to have met you a few weeks ago, Beth! The merriest of Christmases to you!!
Wow. These are gorgeous!! Totally crushing on the eggnog in this recipe!
No eggnog in belgiummm…. Aaarghhhh how do i make these?! Must.make.this!!x
You can make it yourself! There are a ton of recipes online! But if you’re not up to it.. you can just use milk sweetened with sugar and some nutmeg & vanilla added.
My oh my. These look amazing and will be perfect for my Christmas Brunch on Saturday.
This is beautiful. The writing, photos, and recipe. Thank you for sharing and being so real. It’s refreshing and encouraging. Merry Christmas!!
The middle is the best part! I have a day+ old loaf of Challah which will soon be your bread pudding. And after reading this post I will now make these cinnamon rolls with my family on Christmas Eve. Thank you for sharing! Happy Holidays!
Husband is a huge fan of egg nog …and cinnamon rolls. Perfect combination. I know what we’ll be enjoying Christmas morning.
Wonderful! Thank you for being so vulnerable and letting all the random strangers in the blog world into an intimate part of your heart. We need more of that you know. More real, less projection. This post touched my heart and the parts of me that have felt brokenness and had to face my own demons, reached out and touched the demons in you, and there was a quiet understanding of what it takes to face yourself. And I like that you paired this story with cinnamon rolls, because now cinnamon rolls mean something. They’re not just a yummy, heartwarming treat on Christmas, but a quiet reminder that while the world tried to defeat me, I stood my ground. And here I am, making cinnamon rolls with a smile on my face. No words needed.
http://absolutelytara.com
*sigh* I just love coming back to this beautiful little corner of the internet; your words are restorative in every sense of the word. Meeting you for the first time several weeks ago reinforced the love and adoration I have for you, Beth. You are hilarious beyond belief yet exude a quiet dignity and mindfulness and self-awareness that I can only assume stems from said “darkness.” You are truly a gem. Cannot wait for our adventures to come. Thanks for keeping it real. x
Beth — it is exactly because you are the person who posts cinnamon buns for Christmas and mentions bloody fangs in the same breath that I absolutely love reading your words every day, that I save your link in my Feedly for last so I can savor it, that I wish very much that you were in New England and that I could meet you, in person, for real, not just in words. It is exactly because of your unflinching honesty, your perfectly imperfect “shortcomings” and “flaws” that you draw people in with so much warmth, that you are somehow able to help us see the lighter parts of our lights and the darker parts of our darks with such clarity and love.
Also this — “When you’re intimately acquainted with your own brokenness, you become intimately acquainted with healing. … There’s something fundamentally intimate about it all.” oh girl, do I feel you — I got new hips this summer, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how we invade ourselves in order to heal, expose our weaknesses and broken parts and vulnerabilities in order to slowly knit them back together. Your words are healing, Beth, your recipes and stories do so much good. I hope only that they do as much good for you personally as they do for us publicly.
Merry Christmas to you and yours, Beth; wishing you much joy and light this winter.
Great post Beth, both food, photography and prose. I imagine you were a bit overwhelmed by some of the responses but I would have been surprised if it hadn’t touched people, it did me and you know that’s not that easy. But really all I wanted to say (before I read your post) was that I’ve never wanted to eat anything so bad in my life! Are there any left?? Please make another batch for Christmas!
I’ll make some for Christmas. 😀
Oh my heart, Beth. Such words, such achingly beautiful words.
These look like pure heaven. I’ve been thinking a lot about friendship lately. What it means to have friends, be a friend, etc. I think it can be hard for someone like me who is in so many ways an introvert. It’s something I want to work more on in the new year: to be more open and not so reclusive.
Loved you before I read ur post, but now I have a deeper appreciation for ur beautiful work. Stay brave my friend xo
I enjoyed your level of thought into everything . Your depth of thought, of words, light, and flavor.
Totally making these for Christmas morning!
Craving everything about these eggnog cinnamon rolls right now and I just LOVE the sound of that whisky frosting. A decadent treat that is perfect for the holiday season, thanks Beth..
Dear one, thank you.
Sometimes it’s easier to be snarky and cynical than to open up and tell people how you feel about them, at the risk of coming off corny… You are very brave and you make gorgeous cinnamon rolls.
Your words are oh-so-lovely, Beth. Friendship confuses me a bit as well; reading your take on it makes me feel a little less alone. Gorgeous photographs and styling, as usual. You’re so, so talented… and Tiffany is incredible, too, of course! 🙂
You are absolutely my favorite food writer and my favorite photographer. your blog sometimes brings me to tears (in a good way), and I am so thankful that I found it a year ago. Thank you for all of the inspiration, and for all of the beautiful food. Many blessings over the holidays 🙂
your words speak to the inside of my brain
where it is dark and stormy and windswept
on the outside it looks pretty okay
your words make some of the outside okay seep into where it is needed
it calms the storm
it is a ray of light
it helps
thanks
and i’ll be having non cinnamon cinnamon rolls soon
Personally, perfection scares the hell out of me. When I meet someone who projects that all is perfect, my first thought is “NO”. My life has learned me well and, for me, flaws are the true beauty of life…every human being has them yet many cannot face them. Being compassionate towards oneself is the real journey of life. There are no rainbows at the end of this journey…no end, in fact…yet crumbs of peace collected along your way will one day you will wake up and feel lighter. It’s as simple as that and yet not simple at all.
These are lovely Beth. Truly and deeply so. Reading your blog has been a wonderful and eye-opening experience. Thank you for writing with such passion + sincerity. Merry Christmas with many blessings!
Looks amazing for so many reasons, thank you for posting! Thinking of making this for Christmas morning… Curious if you think Soy Nog would work as a substitute to the egg nog?
I think so!
Ohhhhh these look delicious! I’d love to recreate a gluten-free version, but I know they wouldn’t come close. I’ll just drool over your photos. Merry Christmas, Beth!
xxChristie
http://www.KiKiMac.me
Making these for Christmas breakfast!
“When you’re intimately acquainted with your own brokenness, you become intimately acquainted with healing. … ”
It took me yeeaaarrs to realize my brokenness (and we’re kidding ourselves if we don’t think we are all broken, maybe some of us more than others) was a gift because as soon as I learned to accept & forgive myself, I had so much more empathy & compassion for other people’s crap. I found that people would unburden themselves, reveal themselves to me because they knew I got it, they knew that because of my awareness of my own darkness I would not be judging them & they had a safe place to be vulnerable- it still astonishes me, the great privilege of bearing witness to other people’s struggles & how much healing can be experienced in the simple act of being able to commisserate & encourage in an honest way. I obviously don’t know you but posts like this make me like you even more for taking the risk to share yourself in such an intimate way. Thanks for trusting “us”, and hey, as Ram Dass said “we’re all just walking each other home.”
Could you substitute sour cream or yogurt for creme fraiche?
Absolutely.
The way you write… is just wonderful… Words you have a way with. words I can’t get out… Thanks for being you. I’m learning to be… me. Merry Christmas!
Beth… breath taking. I absolutely need your photos in my life. Again,I am so glad I found you on Instagram. May I ask where do you find such kind of inspiration for your photos?
Thank you for posting this lovely recipe & beautiful pictures. Inspiring. Could you post an eggnog recipe?
Beth,
These rolls were the hit of Christmas morning. We ate them with steaming coffee and watched new ice sparkle on the cedar trees outside. The dough is lovely and makes those satisfying, fluffy layers that make you feel like a big success. All-around fantastic. Thanks.
so i actually followed a recipe and made these
not my usual cooking method
i like to improvise
yes, even in baking…gasp
so a couple of comments about the recipe
first off the warming of the nog to bathwater temp, sounds good, but i was not sure, isn’t a bath HOT
anyway, after killing the yeast with too hot nog, i did some research and found that the nog should be 110-115 degrees or it can kill the yeast
not my idea of bathwater temp, but i do live in a cold climate, maybe you do take cool baths
anyway, maybe add the actual temp into the recipe so others don’t kill the yeast as well
second, i had a very hard time smearing the butter evenly over the dough,
any suggestions as to how to do it with messing up the dough?
yes my butter was super soft it just kept smearing INTO the dough
cutting the log with a strong thread, because i do neither fishing or flossing in my kitchen, that was FUN
and those rolls omg, every day i am going to make these
oh so good
thank you
all the best
If I am baking them tomorrow, do I put it in the fridge before or after the second rise? I am making them for my in laws for tomorrow morning and it all smells and tastes wonderful. Thank you for the recipe. We have a crazy love for eggnog! I might decrease the whiskey just a touch next time I make them – then again….I may have gotten a little liberal with the “TBSP” measurement. 🙂
You pop them in the fridge before the second rise! After you cut them you cover them and then leave them in the fridge, making sure to take them out an hour before you intend to bake them!
these cinnamon buns were p-h-e-n-0-m-e-n-a-l!! thank you for sharing your recipe. christmas morning 2014 was one of the most memorable ever thanks to these lovelies.
Beth,
Thank you for sharing this wonderful recipe, I am making these for a little winter dinner party tomorrow night and am so excited to try them out.
The photos for this post are especially beautiful, Tiffany is a fantastic photographer. The dark tones she creates with light are gorgeous. I wanted to ask if that marble work surface is actually your counter-top or a marble block? I want to start photographing the preparation in a similar way, but my counters are hideous. I think a marble work surface is the most gorgeous thing around, so if you were able to find a marble board for a good price I’d love to know where!
second go round on these already
oh so tasty
these will be in my usual baking rotation
now that nog is gone i am trying them with half and half instead
any further hints on how best to smear the butter on without tearing the dough?
thanks again
thank you for your endless inspiration. my half-batch of these rolls is on its second rise, and i can’t wait to taste them.
I think I have fallen in love with your writing,simplistic rustic styling and out of the box recipes.A drop in the ocean me!
I’d like to find out more? I’d love to find out more details.
Your photographs were what first brought me to your website. Over these last few years (has it been so long?!) I have been coming back for more. More writing, more inspiration and so much recognition. I too get frustrated by my raucous energy, frustrated by my sluggish energy . Frustrated by the unpredictable swings. I like you am fighting with my contradictions.
I’m happy for you and your new experience with friendships. May they last long and be fruitful. No ups without downs and how fine it is that there are others that remain by your side through it all.
I would read your posts and come back for more even if there were no photographs nor recipes. It is a pleasure to read your words.
Take care,
Teresa
I’m superbly late to the game here, as usual. These buns take my breath away. I just want to frame these photos and display them on my staircase wall, the one where family photos usually reside.
Your photos are amazing! Thanks for this beautiful bit of Christmas joy!
You’re the gresetat! JMHO