I'll confess, I had a catastrophic failure in bread making in '07 (first and only atteempt) and swore off yeast breads since then.  I started making beer bread successfully this year and finally picked up a jar of yeast with the rest of my Thanksgiving supplies.  Now, what to do with it...

Yeast opens up a vast array of wonderful baked goods that you just can't make with baking powder and soda.  But it can be really intimidating, especially if you've tried to make bread with limited instructions and wound up with very disappointing results like I did.  The key for me was a thorough understanding of what I needed to do, why, and how I should do it, BEFORE I started working.  King Arthur Flour's website has what I believe to be the definitive guide on baking yeast bread.  It's engaging and informative and a must read for anyone looking to start baking with yeast. 

With renewed confidence after reading their guide, instead of starting with a simple hearth loaf, I embarked on a far too complex recipe for a beginner, Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls.  What can I say?  After an extensive conversation with a friend over the magnificent qualities of Cinnabon, I just really, really wanted some.

To my vast surprise, I was actually successful.  The key I was missing appears to have been 'proofing' my yeast with water and sugar.  I also let my dough rise in an oven that I had turned on to preheat to 350 for 3 minutes, then allowed to cool down to about 90-100 degrees, which seems to have been perfect.  I'd like to thank Lauren at Lauren's Latest for an amazing recipe and tutorial that made these wonderful cinnamon rolls almost foolproof.

I've made a couple tweaks to the original recipe, searching for a bit more of a buttery flavor in the filling and increasing the amount of icing for the rolls.  The results have left me with clean pans and no leftovers.  The yield is kind of high, given the amount of calories that I'm sure are in each roll, so plan to share.  Here's my tweaked recipe for Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls.

Even though it never gets cold in Dallas until the last couple days of October, there's nothing better to get me in the autumn frame of mind than baking with pumpkin.  For this month in my year of cookies, I'll be doing a decorated pumpkin cookie inspired by The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle, but instead of using my trusty sugar cookie, I've been working on adapting a brown sugar roll-out recipe to include pumpkin. 

This had a lot of false starts including an extract touted as "pumpkin pie" that hit the trash after first use (aweful!).  Instead, in the place of additional extract, I've been using the Starbucks Pumpkin Pie Spice coffee flavoring.  The iced results have been almost too sweet, but with real pumpkin in the cookies, the texture is very moist and smooth.  I'm still fiddling with it and relatively open to suggestions but this is turning out pretty well.

1 C butter (I like one stick salted, one unsalted)
2 C dark brown sugar
2 eggs
1/2 C pumpkin
2 tsp. extract (I used the Starbucks Pumpkin Pie Spice)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 1/2 C all-purpose flour
2 tsp. cinnamon {spices optional}
1 tsp. nutmeg
dash ground cloves

Cream together butter and sugar. Add eggs, extract, and pumpkin. Mix until fluffy. Sift together dry ingredients and add gradually until all of the dry mixture is incorporated. The dough should be soft but not sticky. If it’s sticky, add flour in small increments until it's not.  Divide dough into three parts, wrap in plastic wrap and chill for at least 30 minutes.

Roll to 1/4 inch thickness and cut out, dusting lightly with flour as needed.

Bake 375 for 8-10 minutes until tops are not shiny.

Almost as soon as my mixer was unpacked and all my parts wiped down I was psyched to break it in.  In my research of what other home bakers were doing I came across the blog for The Adventures of Sweet Sugar Belle along with her amazing sugar cookie recipe.

In my world, sugar cookies have always contained granulated sugar, and lots of it.  By manipulating baking time you can wind up with a soft cookie, but you also get a good amount of spread, round edges and the more you reduce bake time, the more you increase the lingering granular feel.  Sweet Sugar Belle's recipe uses confectioner's (powdered) sugar, and the results are amazing.  You can follow the link above to the original recipe.  The one below contains some minor tweaks that I like.

1 C {two sticks} of salted and unsalted BUTTER (I like one of each), softened
1 1/2 C confectioner’s sugar
1 egg
2T flavoring (pick what you like, I prefer vanilla)
3 1/3 C all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

My oven runs about 15 degrees warm, but these bake at 400, so they're in and out in a quick 7:30-8 minutes, pulling them out just before they start browning.  Once they're cool, it's best to let them rest a day before icing, to prevent the cookie absorbing too much moisture or causing multiple colors to run together.