GF Cinnamon Rolls

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls with Creme-Fraiche Icing

I used to be all like, "omigosh cinnamon rolls are my favorite food!" and then we went all gluten-freek and I felt so much better I just kinda wrote off bread altogether. Plus, you know, you can't be eating cinnamon rolls if you are even the slightest bit interested in losing 10 years worth of baby weight...

Anyway, the other day I happened to have this bag of cinnamon-sugar laying around from a donut project I did with the kids at church, and I didn't want to just throw it away. It seemed to me that an attempt at gluten-free cinnamon rolls was the obvious and inevitable solution. In haste I googled "gluten-free cinnamon rolls" and perused a few recipes, but ended up at one of my staple websites for all things GF, Gluten-free Girl and the Chef.

I love that Shauna uses weight to measure her flours, and she explains why on her very informative blog. I'm mostly excited for a chance to weigh stuff on my cute little kitchen scale! For this recipe we substituted the Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour, because we didn't have almond flour and we are avoiding corn for sensitivity issues. The rest was pretty easy, but it takes all day with mixing, rising, rolling, filling, rolling, rising again, interspersed with going to the park for lunch, doing 4 loads of laundry, cleaning rooms, putting the baby down for a nap, drawing a comic strip and giving the dog a walk. Luckily, Taylor was helping...cooking (and all that life-living!) is always more fun with a little buddy.

I also happened to have a bag of powdered sugar from the same donut project. This sealed the cinnamon roll idea because powdered sugar, when it's not being sprinkled on Aebleskivers or donuts, is begging to be made into icing!* And get this: I didn't have any cream cheese on hand, but I just so happened to have some Creme Fraiche. Three cheers for Creme Fraiche! ...OOO! ...LA! ...LA!

Well, not so accidental on the Creme Fraiche. I'm going to muster another attempt at a home-made mac'n'cheese that Morgen (the Mac'n'Cheese snob of the family) will approve of.

Lots of amazing smells later, this is what we (literally) ate for dinner last night:

The recipe made fourteeen delicious cinnamon rolls. Enough for everyone to have one for breakfast the next day! I would love a softer, squishier dough, but they were pretty good. I might be more about the sugar these days anyway... mmm-mmmm!


*I know I just mentioned a corn-sensitivity and then said we were making icing from powdered sugar, which has cornstarch in it! It's more of a thing we avoid unless we must. eat. icing. If you know of a powdered sugar that is not made with cornstarch (there must be something out there???) please let me know!