Monday, November 25, 2013

Slow Cooker Pumpkin Pie Cinnamon Rolls...ish...

So you have your Thanksgiving dinner planned out... but what about breakfast? You gotta eat before you eat some more, right? Well I saw this post on Get Crocked and thought it would be an appropriate breakfast for Turkey Day. Unfortunately, this turned out to be a disaster but with a twist ending:

I knew something was wrong from the very beginning. Not a good sign. See, the directions say to mix the dry ingredients and slowly add in the wet ingredients. However, listen to all these wet ingredients: 1/2 C milk, 1/4 C water, 3/4 C pumpkin, and 1/4 C canola oil. This wasn't dough, this was what Wednesday Addams played with when eating her dinner...only it was orange.



While I was disappointed by how wet it was (I don't recommend the water or the canola oil!), I gave it an hour to sit instead of the 30 minutes recommended, hoping that would help solidify the dough.

It didn't.

After an hour, I put down as much flour on the table as I could and I tried to knead and spread the dough. Well, the puffs of flour landed everywhere, which made my cat curious, which resulted in me trying to fend him off while simultaneously pouring hot butter on my pants. Finally, after Mother Chaos decided to give me a break, I was able to put the filling on the dough.


Now rolling it up was not an easy task, as the dough was still quite wet and was sticking to the table, flour be damned. I eventually made it work, not caring if it looked pretty or not.


Now I'm supposed to take this and cut it up into pieces? Are you kidding me? At this point I'm laughing like a hyena because goodness knows my kitchen, my clothes, my poor cat, EVERYTHING is covered in flour and now I have to transfer 10-12 pieces to my slow cooker! I cut up 8 "pieces" and put them in the slow cooker, praying for a miracle.


The instructions said 60-90 minutes. Yeah, not helpful. I put them in for an hour and they were still quite doughy in the middle so I kept them in for another 30. I turned it off after that and it's a good thing I did because the edges were very hard but unfortunately the insides were still doughy.

And then there's the frosting... I hoped this might cover up the mistakes. Thankfully my husband doesn't care how his food looks, as long as it tastes good, and he said they taste good! I couldn't get over the doughy middle and rock hard sides but at least the frosting's good!



TOTAL COSTS: Depends on what you have at home - see below
Assuming you have flour, sugar, milk, water, canola oil, butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, butter, and vanilla
You probably don't have:
Yeast - $2.49
Canned pumpkin - $2.39
Pumpkin Pie spice - $6.49
Cream cheese - $2.19

TOTAL AMOUNT OF TIME: 3 hours
20 minutes to make dough
1 hour to sit
30 minutes to make filling, spread onto dough, roll and cut into pieces
90 minutes in the slow cooker
10 minutes to make frosting

EASY-PEASY SCALE (1 super easy - 5 very difficult): 3 out of 5
As long as your dough has the right consistency and isn't a wet glob, you'll be fine. Leave the canola oil and water for the very end. If it's wet enough, don't worry about those other two ingredients. Your kitchen floors, your clothes, and your pets will be grateful.

3 comments:

  1. HAH. Last time I made cinnamon rolls, they were doughy inside WITHOUT the inclusion of pumpkin and a crock pot. I ... yeah. This is a good idea, and I'm totally going to try it, but probably not on a day when company is coming already!

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  2. Love this so much, Kat - thanks for letting us feature you on CraftFail again! :D
    http://craftfail.com/2014/08/sloppy-slow-cooker-pumpkin-pie-cinnamon-rolls/

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