Happy Accident

"I want you to fill your hands with mud,

     like a blessing." 

~Mary Oliver

Much like the creation of myself, these buns were a happy accident. I am one of those people that doesn't bother to check the refrigerator or pantry for the necessary ingredients before I begin to cook. You would think coming from a family of eight, particularly a hungry family of eight, would have taught me to check ahead of time for butter or leftover yams or frozen tofu... but I digress. I end up googling "substitutions for _____" more often than I'd like to admit, but being ill prepared enforces the idea that much of life is a learning experience after all. For example, apple sauce is a good add in to a batch of snickerdoodles when you only have half the amount of margarine needed! The only downside is that the end result tastes like a Granny's Apple Pie scented candle. 

Even if I don't like to research the contents of the kitchen ahead of time, I love learning about the history of food. My friend Katie and I decided to enter the Academic Fair in middle school. Our topic- "the history of ice cream." We made a big poster covered in photos and stickers, facts and figures about the cold dessert. We even had samples of ice cream to hand out to fair goers. One was just ordinary, store bought, but the other we churned ourselves in one of those old fashioned crank powered things that requires rock salt and dry ice. Though Katie got frost bite, and it turns out most of our facts were not exactly correct, we received a third place ribbon. Since then, I make a point of looking at the family trees of all the foods I meet. 

This time, I had meant to make cinnamon rolls. (Look on page 302 of The Big Book Of Breakfast by Maryana Vollstetd, for my favorite recipe) Snow was being blown in great whirls from the cloudy sky, and I was in the mood for something along the lines of a giant, gooey Cinnabon.

The lineage of cinnamon buns is a little tricky. Some say it was invented in Sweden, where it's called kanelbulle. Others say that the Macedonians get the prize because they came up with a sort of haggis spring roll (lamb innards for breakfast anyone?). In any case, they have evolved into a ghastly caloric breakfast that I for one adore. 

Still groggy from sleep, I peered into the fridge. Hidden among slices of squash and riccota pizza, was a box containing one lone egg. I had already combined the warm milk and yeast, so I threw in the yolk and looked for something eggy. We had a bottle of canola oil, so I decided to add a splash of that. Apparently there are occasions where you can use vinegar in place of eggs (say for vegan caesar dressing) or if desperate, a blob of miracle whip, but the thought of combining vinegar or mayo with cinnamon and sugar made me rather nauseous. I then realized we had about a third of the amount of butter required, so I hoped I'd added enough oil to make up the difference. In the end, I wound up with a mound of sticky, floury, cake battery dough which I stuck in our warm utility closet for an hour. It didn't exactly billow up like a parachute the way bread dough is supposed to, but I floured my hands and rolled it into balls, heated the oven to 375 degrees and figured it couldn't hurt to bake the stuff. Once the blobs were on a greased baking sheet, I coated them with a mixture of maple syrup and vanilla extract and sprinkled the tops with sanding sugar and a dusting of cinnamon. After half an hour of baking, the sweet perfume of rolls wafted through the house. When I opened the oven, six gleaming, tan, rather large rolls stared up at me. My step sister, her boyfriend, my mother and my stepfather and I all dived in. Though I don't have a recipe to share, the buns filled the cinnabon gap nicely.