Cinnamon Rolls

My friend, Sarah, had asked me if I ever bought the Rhodes Bake N Serve frozen cinnamon. I had never tried them; never noticed them in the store. Sarah said they were very good but she didn’t know how they would compare to homemade cinnamon rolls. It was a week ago Saturday when I placed my last grocery order and I had bought some then but had never made them. Tonight Vince wanted brownies and, since I don’t like brownies, I decided to bake a few of those cinnamon rolls.

It was during dinner when he asked if I’d make brownies so I kinda had to not follow directions for the cinnamon rolls. I placed six of the frozen slices of dough in a greased cake pan, turned the oven on 325 (only because I had to turn it to something), and left it on for about 5 minutes. It hadn’t even reached 325 yet and I turned it off, put foil over the cinnamon rolls, left the oven door open and stuck them in there. After about 15 minutes, it was barely warm in the oven so I closed the door and left them in there probably another 20 minutes. When I checked on them, they had already risen above the edges of the pan!

The brownies needed to bake at 325 for 39 – 45 minutes but that was in a regular pan. Since I used the “all pieces have edges” pan, I figured I’d bake them for 30 minutes so I put the oven on convection/325 and baked the cinnamon rolls for 15 minutes, then took it off convection and baked the brownies another 15 minutes.

There were 12 cinnamon rolls in the bag and two packages of icing. I baked 6 rolls and used 1 packet of icing but I mixed up a bit more (just butter, powdered sugar, vanilla and cream), and then added the contents of the icing packet, stirred those two together, put just a little icing on the rolls while they were hot, then let them cool while the brownies finished backing, then added the rest of the icing.

I probably put more cinnamon and sugar in the filling of my cinnamon rolls but these were good . . good enough that if I have them on hand, I’m happy to fix them instead of making homemade!

Have I turned into a horribly lazy cook?

By the way, this is the brownie pan I used. According to Amazon, I’ve had it since 2013. Here’s something funny. I saw the pan sitting on a shelf in the garage the other day so I went out and got it, washed it and used it. Vince saw me spooning the brownie batter in there and he said “I wondered what that pan was for!” He had packed it and unpacked it and he said both times, he wondered what it was for. I asked him what he thought and he said . . something flowing. He said he would never have guessed there was a pan so each piece would have edges. I told him . . we have all kinds of neat cooking stuff. He said “I know! I just spent six months packing it all!” Poor Vince. At least he got brownies.