Christmas Breakfast: A Lesson Learned

I had planned to bake "make-ahead sticky buns' from the AJC on Christmas morning. Only problem is that I'm a "pantry-cook," meaning that I make meals based on items I have in the refrigerator or the pantry already on hand, and I tend to pick the recipe after I find the ingredients in my pantry.

I was disappointed that I didn't check the ingredients for these "make-ahead" sticky buns sooner than Christmas Eve; alas, I didn't have several key ingredients so I had to search the Internet to find a similar recipe which only required ingredients I had on hand.

I found a sticky-bun recipe from Martha Stewart. It looked easy enough, and I even had yeast.

I made the dough ahead of time as called for by the recipe and stuck it in the fridge to rise overnight. Now I'm a pretty good cook, but I don't bake very much (trying to watch the muffin top tummy that I've developed over time). So even though the dough seemed thick, I thought I was on the right track.

Next morning, Christmas Day, I rolled out the dough, brushed the sour cream over the top (yuck), added the brown sugar etc., put the Karo corn syrup and pecans in the muffin tins, and finished off by rolling, cutting, and stuffing the dough into the baking tins. I wondered why there was SO much dough that I had to stuff it all in, but I guessed that maybe it was to create fluffy, maxi-sized gooey buns. After they were done, I turned them out on the parchment paper as directed, and, voila! They looked perfectly delicious. Youngest daughter, the carb-eating, cinnabon lover, breakfast monger could hardly keep her little hands off the yummy looking buns... I was so proud!

I also cooked an omelette with cheddar cheese, some bacon, and blended up some Orange Julius, that sugary sweet drink with OJ and milk and sugar that I used to love to get at Orange Julius in Ala Moana Center.

The family was hungry, I could sense that, and they could hardly wait for the blessing of thanks before grabbing the buns and bacon.

The bottom line is that the sticky buns, though beautiful on the outside, were dense, tasteless globs of dough on the inside; to my horror, they were the worst item on the table. They weren't even sweet, and as for fluff, forget it! The best thing on the table was the bacon: straightforward, simple to cook, and tasty and salty!

The moral of the story: Next year I'll stick with the "traditional" Sister Shubert Cinnamon Rolls straight from the freezer to the oven, and I'll save myself a lot of time and disappointment!