Saturday, November 13, 2010

Cinnamon Roll Cookies

Every year, I attend at least a couple of holiday cookie exchanges. This year, my step-mother wins the award for having hers the earliest...November 13th! She has pretty specific rules for her cookie exchanges: no chocolate chip, peanut butter, oatmeal raisin, bar cookies or snickerdoodles. I don't know about you, but she just cut out all of my favorites (except for oatmeal raisin...eww!)! This makes me have to be creative, though, and that's not a bad thing. :)

This year, I came up with a cheaters version of snickerdoodles. Please don't tell her! LOL Cinnamon Roll Cookies!

Here are some quickie directions on how to make these.

Take your favorite sugar cookie recipe. It can be from scratch, a package mix or even a pre-mixed dough log from the refrigerated section of the grocery store. Take about 1/2 of a scratch recipe or 1 package or log and roll it out into about 1/8" thick rectangle shape onto a well-floured surface (ding, ding ding...this is KEY! Also, if you are using a premade log, I would recommend kneading in about 1/8 cup of flour so they don't spread out too much.) The thickness part is not an exact science, but keep in mind that you don't want it to be too terribly thick since we're going to roll this up like a pinwheel.

Once you have it rolled out, sprinkle the top of it liberally with cinnamon. Then, starting at a long side of the rectangle, start tightly rolling the cookie dough onto itself, creating a long pinwheel. I would recommend putting the rolled log into the refrigerator for at least an hour, but overnight would be best. You can take that advice or leave it, but if you're not in a hurry to get them done, I would definitely refrigerate.

Once your log has been in the fridge for at least an hour, take it out and start slicing one of the ends, making them approx 1/4" thick. See? You're just making your own slice and bake cookies! LOL Bake your cookies according to their package directions.

For for the glaze, mix together 1 and 1/8 cup powdered sugar, 2 Tablespoons of milk and 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla. Once these are mixed together and it's nice and smooth, pipe it in a zig-zag motion onto the cooled cookies.

Don't they look delish? They are!


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