Experiment 1: Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Figure 1. Delicious Just Became a Noun

Introduction

Recipe number one!  Are you excited?  We are!  We were planning to start off with something healthier for a main course.  But there's nothing wrong with having dessert for your main course.
Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls (PCR) sounded so much more delicious than anything else, that we had to start with them.

Historical Note: Cinnamon rolls, or kanelbullens, are thought to originate from Sweden, where October 4th is celebrated as Cinnamon Roll Day (kanelbullens dag) (Hembakingsrådet 2012).

Figure 2. Our NFPA - PCR Rank

Explanation of our ranking:

Prep Time: If you only made PCRs, this is how long it would take.  The time increases if you refrigerate the dough...so we didn't.

Difficulty:  This was tough to determine since it's our first recipe and we had no benchmarks on the difficulty scale for comparison.  So we picked 7.  This recipe has a ton of ingredients, and a ton of steps.  It's complicated, but the first bite of warm cinnamon, sugary glaze, and pumpkin dough makes it all worth it.

Course: Is there a wrong time of day to eat something so delicious?  Nope.

Materials
Dough

Figure 3. Dough...Sort of looks like a brain!

1) Unsalted Butter - 6 tablespoons
2) Whole Milk - 0.5 cup
3) Active Dry Yeast - 2.25 teaspoons
4) Flour - 3.5 cups
5) Light or Dark Brown Sugar - 0.25 cups
6) Granulated Sugar - 0.25 cups
7) Table Salt - 1 teaspoon...NaCl :)
8) Ground Cinnamon - 0.5 teaspoons
9) Freshly Grated Nutmeg - 0.25 teaspoons
10) Ground Cardamom - 0.125 (1/8) teaspoons
11) Ground Ginger - 0.25 teaspoons
12) Pumpkin Purée, canned or homemade
13) Egg - 1 large
14) Oil for coating rising bowl

Filling
1) Light or Dark Brown Sugar - 0.75 cups, packed
2) Granulated Sugar - 0.25 cups
3) Sodium Chloride - 0.125 teaspoons
4) Ground Cinnamon - 2 teaspoons

Glaze
1) Softened Cream Cheese - 4 oz.
2) Milk - 2 tablespoons
3) Powdered Sugar - 2 cups
4) Vanilla Extract - A few drops

Procedure
Making the Dough
1) Melt butter in a saucepan.  Let it burn a bit for extra flavor (Perelman 2012).  Remove from heat.
2) Combine warmed milk (not over 116 ˚F) with yeast in a bowl.  Look for foam after 5-7 minutes.
3) In a different bowl, use an electric mixer to combine flour, granulated sugar, brown sugar, salt, and spices.  Add 0.25 cups of the melted butter and stir.  Add milk-yeast mixture, pumpkin purée, and egg, then mix.
4) Scrape mixture into a large, oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.  Set aside for 1 hour, it should double.

Assembling the PCRs
1) Scoop dough onto a well-floured surface.

Figure 4. Measuring the Dough Dimensions

2) Use a rolling pin to roll the dough into a 11x16x0.5 inch rectangular prism.
3) Brush the rest of the melted butter over the dough.
4) In a bowl, stir together all of the filling ingredients.  Sprinkle the mixture evenly over the dough.
5) Starting on the longer side, carefully roll the dough into a tight spiral.
6) Cut the cinnamon rolls in slices (1-inch sections) using a sharp serrated knife. Apply almost no force to the to the knife while cutting.  Cut 16-18 slices.
7) Put cut slices into baking pans arranged laterally.  Cover and let them rise for 45 minutes.

Figure 5. Our Perfectly Sliced PCRs - Pre-Baking

Baking
1) Pre-heat oven to 350 ˚F
2) Put the PCRs in the oven for 25 minutes.

Making the Glaze
1) Combine whipped cream cheese, milk, powdered sugar, and vanilla in a bowl and mix.
2) Spread the glaze on the cooked PCRs after they have cooled a bit.

Figure 6. Timeline

Results
Objectively speaking, we are happy to report that all taste testers (n=2) ranked the PCRs as unrealistically delicious on a scale from good to unrealistically delicious.  A third taste tester spent several hours trying enthusiastically, but unsuccessfully, to get a bite.

Let's start with that gigantic list of ingredients.  All ingredients were purchased in October 2012 at Treasure Island.  We used salted butter instead of unsalted, skim milk instead of whole, the first yeast we found instead of active dry yeast, and no cardamom.  We decided on dark brown sugar because a woman shopping in Treasure Island told us the flavor of dark brown sugar is better than the flavor of light brown sugar.  We used canned pumpkin purée instead of homemade.  Unanimously, we decided that unless we got to grow the pumpkin, then there was really no need to make our own purée.  Though we have mad skills, we doubted that we would be able to grow a pumpkin within the frame of our timeline (Fig. 6).

Figure 7. Bad Yeast

Time to chat about making the dough!  First of all, we couldn't really tell if the yeast was foaming in the milk.  It didn't look like the PCRs ever rose either.  Maybe we got a packet of bad yeast (Fig. 7). Also, we mixed everything by hand since neither of us has an electric mixer.

Some notes about assembling the PCRs: We didn't have a rolling pin, so we were going to use a wine bottle.  Then we decided on a plastic cup because wine bottles with a two glasses-worth of red in them don't mix well with dishwashers.  We rolled the dough into almost the right size, limited by the size of our largest cutting board, but then rolled it in the wrong direction (lengthwise instead of width-wise.)  The effect of rolling in the wrong direction was that our rolls had fewer rings and were bigger.  Instead of 16-18 PCRs, we sliced 12. 

Figure 8. Rolled Dough and Filling

Discussion

Figure 9. Mmmm...Carbs!

To some of you, the title may read "CARBOHYDRATES!!!!"  We understand.  In this post-Atkinsian world in which we live, we have learned to avoid carbs like that almost-empty milk jug that's been sitting in the back of your fridge for a while.  However, to be fair, in moderation, carbohydrates are our most important (and most delicious) resource.  In fact, carbs are our primary source of energy.  Glucose is broken down in our mitochondria (the power plant of the cell) and converted into little energy stores called ATP, which go around and provide our cells with the energy they need to function.

In fact, the importance of carbohydrates is precisely why they taste so good.  Catch-22, right?  The sweet receptors in our taste buds are of a class of receptors that pass messages along an assembly line of molecules.  This system lets the initial sweet signal to amplify at each step.  Think of it as one person passing a message to three more people, and each of those people passing that message to three more people, and so on and so forth...but on a much grander scale (quantitatively speaking).  As a result, our brain knows right away what is going on and responds with, "I like this...I WANT MORE!!!"

In carboloaded foods like bread, pasta, etc., carbs come in the form of starches, which are big chains of glucose molecules. We don't perceive these complex carbs as sweet tasting because glucose doesn't register to our sweet taste receptors when it's locked up in this form.  Fortunately, there is an enzyme in our saliva called salivary amylase that starts breaking down starch into glucose before we swallow!

Health Note:  After munching on a few of these unrealistically delicious PCRs, we figured out that each roll had about 0.3 cups of sugar in it.  And a lot of butter.  It may be best to ignore those facts if you want to enjoy your food.

You'll notice our pictures don't include any rolls with frosting (the primary contributor to the sugar content).  We didn't want to cover up the pretty spirals!

*If you read our pilot study, you know how we feel about this vague unit of volume.

Future Directions
Coming next: Mexican-Style Chicken!

References
1) Hembakingsrådet. 2012. "Välkommen kanelbulleälskare!" Kanellbullens Day.

2) Perelman, D. 2012. "Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls." smittenkitchen.com.