Cinnamon & Pecan Rolls

So now that university is officially over, I have a degree (but haven't graduated just yet!), I'm back home and baking. Opening our bread cupboard to homemade loaves of bread rather than shop-bought stuff is always nice, but I haven't convinced my parents we need a bread machine just yet, I'll just keep on kneading it in the KitchenAid.

But yesterday I decided it was time to push my bread making skills further than piling in the ingredients and pressing 'start'. And so, cinnamon and pecan rolls were born!

Ready to tear and share!

I had scoured a couple of recipes for cinnamon rolls, so what I made was a bit of a mash up of a few ideas.

Ingredients

• 450g strong white flour
• 85g unsalted butter
• 50g caster sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 7g sachet dried yeast
• 2 eggs
• 150ml semi-skimmed milk
• 100g pecans
• 80g light brown sugar
• 2 tsps cinnamon
• A knob of unsalted butter (melted)
• Icing sugar
• A few more splashes of milk
• Vanilla essence

Method

1. Rub the butter in to the flour with your fingers or whiz it up in a food processor to make breadcrumbs.
2. Add the caster sugar, salt and yeast and mix it up some more.
3. Beat the eggs separately, and mix this in.
4. Warm the milk slightly, either pop it in the microwave or in a pan, as this will help with the dough's rise.
5. Mix the milk in carefully.
6. Knead for 7 minutes in a mixer with a hook, or for twice as long by hand - warning, this starts off very sticky, so I would advise you do it in a mixer!
7. Pop the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with a clean tea towel or oiled cling film, and leave to rise for an hour (or until doubled in size) in a warm place - I would advise the airing cupboard if you have one!
8. Whilst the dugh is rising, pop the pecans, brown sugar and cinnamon in a food processor and chop it all up. (Try not to then eat this off a spoon, I think it's really yummy!)
9. Knock the dough back to get rid of any air bubbles and knead for 30-60seconds.
10. Split the dough in two, and roll each portion out to about the width of your rolling pin (approx 30-40cm) in to a rectangle so the dough is relatively thin (the other side should not be as wide as the rolling pin width!)
11. Brush the dough with the melted butter, and spread the cinnamon pecan mix out evenly over both portions of dough.
12. Carefully roll up the dough (rolling up from the longer side), like a swiss roll, and pinch to join it all together.
13. Now, slice so you have lots of mini rolls - I split each roll in to 12 even portions, so I had 24 mini rolls in total.
14. Arrange in the dish (or dishes) you want to bake them in - I used two 8cm round tins, and had two rolls left over - and leave to rise for another hour.
15. Once risen, bake at 180C for 30 minutes. Take them out and leave to cool
16. While cooling, make your icing to drizzle over the top (this completes it!) - mix icing sugar with minimal amounts of milk until you get a gloopy consistency, plus add a few drops of vanilla essence to taste. Once the rolls have cooled, drizzle it over the top (preferably with something underneath to catch the drips!).
17. Tear and Share!

Rolled and ready to rise!

Pre-icing, still looked divine!