Cinnamon scroll with matcha and cookies&cream icing.

Yields: 16 rolls













Hellooooooooo I am back after almost another month being absent from posting! I was so stuffed up again this whole month. Today is like, my half day off, and here I am spending it to post. It's a day off for me cause I haven't slept last night, finishing my literature review for my final assignments, I got like 5000 words in a day and I am crazy proud of it, lol. Anyways, I'm so psyched that I manage to finish it on time! Although I feel like a walking zombie right now.



But in between the studying and making assignments I procrastinated, a lot. And procrastinate here means going down to my local supermarket and bake! I don't know if its the baking or the eating itself that's therapeutic for me, but when I was so fed up of writing scientific reports, I decided to bake cinnamon rolls with matcha and cookies&cream icing.

The reason I chose to make this is that there's a lot of waiting time and so in between I can get back to my assignment. See I was being quite productive.

Anyway, it involves a reaction that includes yeast, which is pretty cool seeing them producing those CO2. The waiting time here is really crucial and it's important to not speed up the fermentation process to ensure maximum volume of dough.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 package of dry yeast, approx. 7g
• 3/4 cup of full cream milk
• 1/4 cup of granulated white sugar
• 1/4 cup of water *AT 115 degree F
• 1/4 tsp of vanilla extract
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp of salt
• 1/4 cup of unsalted butter, melted and cooled
• 4 cups of all purpose flour

For the filling:

• 1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
• 3/4 cup of brown sugar
• 1/4 cup of granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 tbs of ground cinnamon, because duh, it's a cinnamon roll.

For the icing:

• 1/4 cup of cream cheese, softened at room temperature
• 1 tbs of butter, softened at room temperature
• about 1 to 1 1/4 cups of pure icing sugar
• 1/2 tsp of vanilla extract
• 3 to 4 tbs of warm milk
• 2 tbs high quality matcha powder
• 6 oreo cookies, crumbled but not too fine

Let's get cookin.

First thing first, turn on your kettle on and heat up your water to 115 degree F, add a teaspoon of sugar and sprinkle your yeast on the water. Set aside for 5 minutes.

After 5 minutes, look how prettayyyyyy... 

Next thing to do: mise en place.

It's just another cool-sounding way to say "get every thing prepared and put in place". What I have here is the melted butter, flour along with the salt, sugar, milk, egg along with vanilla extract and the yeast mixture.

Get your stand mixer ready with dough hook attached. If you don't have one, don't panic, you can still mix this by hand and knead it manually.

In the mixing bowl, add the egg, melted butter, milk and mix. Then add 2 cups of the flour along with the yeast mixture, mix until just incorporated. Then add the remaining 2 cups of flour on low speed to avoid having a flour facial. Once it's all incorporated, turn up the speed to medium and mix for another 5-7 minutes until you have one smooth dough that comes away from the side of the bowl.

While waiting, oil a large bowl where your dough will sit and sleep and ferment.

Once your dough looks like this, carefully form a ball and put it on the oiled bowl.

Cover the bowl with cling wrap and put it in a warm place for 2 WHOLE HOURS.

While waiting, prepare the filling by mixing eeeeverything together. Set aside.

Okay, it was so smart of me to forget to take a picture of the raised dough. But after two hours you'll have a dough that's twice the size of your original dough, this will be super sticky so directly tip it out on a floured surface. Then with a rolling pin, roll it to about 23 x 38 cm. Don't have to be precise here, you don't need a ruler for this, just follow your heart. 

The rolled dough will be thin, but don't you worry child, see Heaven's got a plan for you.

Spread the softened butter on the dough.

Sprinkle evenly the filling mixture.

Start rolling from one long end, make sure that every roll is tight.

Once it's rolled throughout, I like to cut the edges. As you can see I was very bad at rolling, that there was a huge gap between each layer. Kind of like how huge I wanted my thigh gap to be.

Cut the log into 16 pieces by cutting into half and into half and into half and into half. Until you have 16 rolls.

Oil / butter a glass pan or a baking tray generously with butter. Put your rolls a bit far from each other to allow some space for them to grow. 

Leave it for another 1.5 hours and let the magic happen.

TA-DAAAA

...

They are so fluffy and they double up in size in no time. Kind of like me after eating.

Brush the top off with some melted butter to give the beautiful brown colour.

Bake this in a preheated 350 degree F (about 180 degree C) for around 30 minutes. 

--------------------------

While waiting, prepare your icing by combining cream cheese, butter, vanilla extract and icing sugar in a stand mixer with a whisk attachment and whip just until they are well incorporated. Add the milk a tablespoon at a time until it has a consistency that is not too thick nor too thin. Again, gotta use your feeling here. Divide the icing mixture into two different bowl, one to be added with the matcha powder and the other one with 3/4 of the oreo crumb. Reserve the 1/4 for putting on top of the rolls later.

Cannot believe I was being smart again and forgot to take a picture of the rolls coming out of the oven! But anyway, once it cooled down slightly, I spoon the icing to each of the rolls, and this is what it looks like:

Okay, they were not perfectly round and the some of the shapes were definitely not pretty. But who cares, look at how cute they look and they're so fluffy. Although  I did crumbled the Oreo way too finely that the icing looks more like a chocolate icing than a cookies and cream.

Next time I would set the rolled dough further from each other so they won't stick together as much and so they will have a round shape. But, for a first attempt I'm quite happy with the outcome. 

It's sweet, it's fluffy, it's food, what's not to like?

They see me scrollin', they hatin'