UnRecipe: Carb-o-tronic

I don't have a wheat intolerance, but I'm fairly sure I gave my system the shock of its life a while back when I went on a baking spree. This was actually a while back when the weather was a lot cooler and it actually felt good to keep the oven going, to keep the house feeling cozy. The result were baked goods that include Buttermilk Orange Marmalade Scones and Buttermilk Cinnamon Buns. *Burp* So delicious.

Sconed Love - Photo by Wasabi Prime

The scones had a good, legitimate reason for coming to be on this planet. It was a friend's birthday and I thought it would be nice to give something homemade. It's also the gracious gift-giving solution when one is broke-as-a-joke, but can at least offer useful skills like making baked treats. I included a little jar of butter whipped with the marmalade, to make it that much more citrusy and to guarantee that scurvy will never affect this Birthday Girl. For the scones, I used this Dried Cherry Buttermilk Scones recipe from Gourmet, by way of Epicurious -- minus the dried cherries, and with a few spoonfuls of the orange marmalade. Admittedly, I was the bad baker and just eyeballed the marmalade addition, and then threw in an extra tablespoon of flour or two, to offset the additional liquid. Terrible, terrible, I know. But they came out fine, as I did several taste-tests before giving away the tin of buttery scone goodness to my friend.

You can never buy just the amount of buttermilk you need. You always wind up with extra. There's some Cardinal rule that this will happen, no matter what -- deal with it. So what do you do? Make buttermilk cinnamon rolls, of course. Duh, right?! Aside from one baking shenanigan enabling yet another carby misadventure, it's worth the calories as the house smells amazing when you bake cinnamon rolls. I'm sure using the tee-hee-cannibalistic Pillsbury Doughboy's cylinder of premade dough will make your house smell just as cinnamony-good, but the proof is in the resulting baked treat as you get a more flavorful dough and that made-from-scratch warm fuzzy feeling after doing all the work yourself. I pulled this recipe from my old web-pal AllRecipes.com, using this basic Buttermilk Cinnamon Roll Recipe.

Eat this, Pillsbury Doughboy! - Photo by Wasabi Prime

Sure, these Wasabi-made rolls didn't have the bakery-perfect roundish-squarish shape of a proper cinnamon bun. But damn it all if they didn't taste rootin'-tootin' good. I had an excess of marmalade butter, so used that in place of plain butter for the filling, so it made for a more citrusy-flavored center. For the glaze, I used the last bit of buttermilk, making it more tart, like a sweetened goat cheese. That may sound a little gross, but it was quite nice, like a cinnamon, citrus, doughy cheesecake. Overall it was a cinnamon roll that was more flavorful without that overwhelming sugar-sweetness, as most store-bought pastries tend to be. I look forward to cooler temperatures returning later in the year, so that I can revisit this recipe and indulge once again!