Orange Sweet Rolls

If I had to give my blog one valid criticism in terms of content I would say that one of them would be that there are certain dishes that I don’t make/share enough of on here. There aren’t enough salad recipes on Cooking is My Sport. This isn’t because I don’t like salad–I actually love it, provided it’s done with the right mixings and a delicious dressing. It’s just that most of the salads I make for myself aren’t exactly…recipe-worthy. There’s no real formula to it and I don’t even really “make” most of it. I mix raw bell peppers, caramelized onions, rotisserie chicken together and have Catalina dressing/Sriracha mixed in. It’s absolutely delicious, but it’s not much of a ‘recipe’.

There should also be more variety to my Breakfast section, especially #1, since we eat breakfast for dinner so often in our house, #2 It’s one of the things I like to cook the most. I’ve said before that pancakes are my one true love, but strangely enough I’ve never posted them here. Part of that is my photographer’s anxiety at being able to get good, drool-worthy pictures of pancakes. (It’s harder than it seems). There are also other favorite breakfast foods I have that I still haven’t shared on the blog yet, for reasons.

I know that many food bloggers will create and photograph entire dishes that they don’t eat and will either give away or even….(gasp) throw it away.

Yeah, I  definitely don’t have enough money laying around to waste food like that. Everything I make/bake/post on this blog, we eat. And that actually explains why I haven’t been able to make some of breakfast foods I like, since I’m not the only one who lives here and my tastes don’t always align with everyone else’s. For example…I love cinnamon rolls.

LOVE. Cinnamon. Rolls.

However…my older sister doesn’t really like cinnamon rolls.

God, it pains me to even type that. C’mon, who DOESN’T love homemade cinnamon rolls (and Cinnabon, obviously)? But, tis true. She’s just not a huge fan of cinnamon, so even though I love them I don’t make cinnamon rolls often. However, recently I was able to find a middle ground between our tastes to where I could make something else that she WAS pretty satisfied with, and that also satisfied my craving for a cinnamon roll. Fortunately, she does like citrus, so I thought I would try to do something with that for a brinner one night.

Personally, EYE think that cinnamon and orange are a delicious pairing, but as my sister’s tastebuds really don’t agree with me, I decided to improvise and look for some other spices to use to flavor both the dough and the filling for my sweet-rolls-that-were-not-going-to-be-cinnamony. For the dough, I used vanilla, fresh orange zest and cardamom. Cardamom has a zesty, almost fruity flavor itself and when paired with the orange I thought would give it a familiar spiciness that the cinnamon would’ve given.

The filling is different from most cinnamon rolls recipes where a generous glob of butter is melted down then mixed into the cinnamon sugar. Here, orange zest is rubbed into the sugar, then mixed with softened butter, orange juice, cardamom and ginger. This forms a smooth kind of ‘paste’ that gets rubbed over the dough before the whole things gets rolled up. (Make sure you use all of it too! It may seem like it’s too much, but just smooth it out as evenly as you can with a spatula and tuck in any excess.) You’ll see why when they’re finished baking.

In some cinnamon roll recipes, I’ve noticed that the filling gets absorbed into the dough itself so that by itself there isn’t much gooey goodness inside. Not with these. The smooth orange ‘paste’ when baked up almost becomes like a stiff curd. It’s got a slight crust on the outside and is bright, tart, sticky goodness on the inside. The spices are just what’s needed to contrast the sweetness. These are delicious enough to eat on their own, but I do love a good icing on my buns so I made one with powdered sugar and more fresh orange zest and juice. I’ve found that it’s best slathered on the rolls almost as soon as they come out of the oven. That way, the icing will sink into all those nooks and crannies of the swirls and absorb the flavor of the dough. Yum.

So, I think I really pulled this out. Not only do I get to add another much-needed recipe to my Breakfast foods section, my sister really loved these. As did I. As will you when you make them for yourselves. Sharing at this week’s Fiesta Friday #218, co-hosted this week by Ginger @ Ginger & Bread and Julianna @ Foodie on Board.

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