Flour on the Floor: Quick Cinnamon Buns

There are lots of footprints in the flour this week.  My husband’s sister visited from her home in NYC.  She recently moved to a larger city apartment from one with a kitchen you might mistake for a key shelf.  It had a dorm room fridge and two burners that you could cover with plywood to create a counter. But there was no oven.  No oven.  It is an understatement to say that baking is not a hobby of hers.  But being a good Aunt is, so she asks if she can join the kitchen fray this week.

As the saying goes, “a crowd draws a crowd.”  When his Aunt announces that she wants to bake, my son says he does too.  That means four people—working on the one recipe.  My kitchen has honest-to-goodness countertops but it’s still a galley.  We crowd in.

My daughter offers an apron to her aunt Ekie (what the kids call her).  I tie on the gray and yellow one my friend gave me as a congratulations gift for starting this blog.  My son wrinkles his nose when we offer him an apron to wear.  When Ekie tries to tuck a kitchen towel into his shirt, he runs. 

Our home is circular.  You can make a loop through the den, dining room, living room and kitchen without breaking stride or making any sharp turns.  Consequently, this can be done with speed.  My daughter used to circle endlessly on her tiny trike in the winter months.  Now she’s discovered television. 

Today while she and I assemble ingredients, my son and Ekie screech through the kitchen then around and around.  It’s like trying to bake in the middle of a racetrack, minus the hot sun and double first names.  We pull out the bowls, sugar, and flour and they start playing hide and seek.  If we are stealth enough we might just pull off the entire recipe without them noticing.  But then the fun parts—measuring and stirring—begin and my son is there jockeying elbow to elbow with my daughter for equality. 

“She got to measure two spoons of sugar and I only got to do one!” 

“He is wixing (four-year-old speak for “whisking”) for longer than me!”

I think of my unfinished meditation classes with regret now.  I force myself to re-focus on this week’s recipe for Quick Cinnamon Buns.  I understand, as the Baking Illustrated editors handily explain, that by “quick” they mean there’s no yeast.  But as I survey the three separate mini-recipes to be prepared (cinnamon-sugar filling, biscuit dough, and icing) and the steps involved (including rolling out said biscuits), I think that they don’t have children in their test kitchens.  Or Ekie.

Ekie turns out to be an eye-baller.  I, on the other hand, am a leveler.  She scoops a quarter cup of sugar and dumps it in though it is mounding on one side.  She shrugs, “Its close enough.” And though I know she’s right and also that sharing a kitchen with kids necessarily means that things will be inexact, I’m relieved when my daughter reminds me to get out the scale.

Using the scale for measuring ingredients is a new development in our home.  Last summer, our family went to the Chicago Botanic Garden and happened to catch a presentation by a pastry chef from Diva Confections.  As the audience members fanned themselves with garden maps, she explained that weighing ingredients is always better than simply measuring because of the greater degree of accuracy—especially with items like flour that may settle. 

We pull out the scale and my son is thrilled to see an electronic introduced into the kitchen (but is likely dismayed that he can’t download Angry Birds on it).  He’s eager to use the scale but his sister pushes his hand away, depresses the “on” button and places an empty bowl on the flat platform.  She has spent four and a half years in his snaggle-toothed shadow with him answering questions on her behalf and telling her what to do.  Now she asserts herself—for once she knows something that he doesn’t.  She shows her brother how to zero out the scale so that it will only measure the flour we add and not the bowl.  She points out where to look for the numbers to say 12 ½ ounces to show that we have slowly added the right amount.  He is listening.  She is beaming.

After this triumph comes a setback.  We finish mixing the dough ingredients and I ask Ekie to toss the leftover buttermilk since it’s already one day past the label date.  In vintage Ekie-fashion, she is thorough and thoughtful.  She dumps it in the sink, rinses the carton then recycles it.  In vintage Pamela-fashion, I only then finish reading the recipe.  We will also need buttermilk for the icing. 

In the meantime, we roll out the dough and take turns pressing the cinnamon-sugar mix into its sticky surface.  My husband arrives home and now there are five people in the kitchen.  He helpfully suggests that the kids and I roll the dough into a log together.  At the same time.  After I decide against smacking his hand with a wooden spoon, I take the far end of the flattened dough.  My daughter takes the middle and my son starts on the other end.  We roll at different speeds and with varied levels of tightness.  Our bun log looks like a sick snake. 

I slice it and pop it into the oven.  While it bakes, my husband heads to the store for the required buttermilk, having to buy a quart to satisfy my two-tablespoon need.  It is Saturday night and Ekie takes the kids to an early movie which means I get to ice the buns alone in my quiet kitchen. 

I promptly eat a whole roll while the icing is still dribbling down its sides.  It has a little bit of tartness, likely owing to the buttermilk in the icing, and just the right amount of gooey dough and crunchy sugar filling.  My husband begins calculating the Weight Watchers points online for each roll and I think he temporarily locks up the site while it tries to compute the astounding total.  But I savor each silent bite and every calorie is worth it.

Follow Pamela Rothbard on Twitter by clicking here. To read more of Pamela Rothbard's blog, "Flour on the Floor," click the links below:

Coffeecake Muffins

North vs. South Cornbread Throwdown

Cranberry Nut Bread

Banana Bread

Flour on the Floor: A Mother-Daughter Baking Project