Puff Pastry Cinnamon Rolls

I absolutely love weekend mornings.  The Payaso and I usually wake up around 5:00 a.m. during the week, so to be able to sleep in until 6:00 a.m. on the weekends is a big treat for us.  The pups always need to go potty and their tiny bladders are definitely on a routine.  We hear little whimpers reminding that it’s time to let them out if it gets past 6:30 a.m.  Don’t fret; I make up sleep time with weekend naps in the afternoon.  Love those afternoon naps!

I especially look forward to weekend mornings during Minnesota months that allow for us to have our morning coffee outside.  Sitting on the deck and drinking coffee with a nice breeze is a little slice of heaven for us, and this weekend didn’t disappoint.  The weather was much cooler than those most recent, and the sun was hiding behind clouds, which reminded us of living in Berkeley, California.   This morning I whipped up a quick batch of cinnamon rolls, and it took no more than 30 minutes.  Who can argue with a cinnamon roll that takes less than 30 minutes from start to finish?  My secret ingredient is puff pastry.  I always have puff pastry in our freezer (psst….you should, too!).  It’s the perfect, quick ingredient that allows for so many options.  I use it to make vegetable tarts (spread goat cheese and grilled vegetables on top of the pastry before baking – asparagus and fresh dill are one of my favorite combinations) or fruit tarts (place sliced apples or pears on top of puff pastry and brush with butter and cinnamon before baking – top with caramel sauce and chopped nuts once it comes out of the oven).  Here’s how I made these easy, peasy cinnamon rolls to go along with our morning coffee.

I make these more than I should (as evidenced by my food baby belly), but that’s because they are so easy and really go well with coffee.  I’ve used lemon, orange and almond extract in the glaze to play around with the flavor and all were a success.  I’ve even added dried cranberries and dried blueberries, which were delicious.  Of course, add your favorite kind of nut, too (just don’t bake your significant other..haha)!  You may be tempted to use more butter than what I’ve called for in the recipe to which I say “don’t you dare!”  The puff pastry has a lot of butter in it and too much butter will leave you with extremely flat, greasy cinnamon rolls.  The idea behind putting the puff pastry back into the refrigerator is so that the butter in the pastry has a change to harden again.  While it bakes, the butter steams, which is what causes all of those amazing layers within the puff pastry.  If you have the time the night before to assemble the rolls, by all means do it.  You’ll have nice, flaky rolls the next morning.  If you only have five minutes, your rolls will be just as flaky.  I’m talking about cinnamon rolls, not your rolls…awe, never mind.  🙂

While these were baking, I had just enough time to do a quick walk through the garden and take a picture of what’s in bloom this week.

Iris are some of my favorite spring flowers.  Each year I go on and on about how beautifully shaped they are.  I also love that we have a lot of different colors in our garden.  The yellow and burgundy are especially vibrant this year.  The reddish iris are called Rio Rojo.  These were some of the first iris we planted in our gardens when we moved into our house three years ago.  They keep multiplying and I love how dark they are before they bloom.  They almost look black before they open.  I spend a lot of time walking next to the row of lilac colored iris every night after work.  There’s just something about iris that are calming to me.

We have a burgundy peony that opened fully and is already over for the season.  Peonies are fabulous, but they are so short lived, which is a real shame given all the work ants put in so the buds can open.   We had a big rainstorm last night so all of the blooms are heavy with water, but this white peony was still standing up tall and proud this morning.  It was just begging to be photographed.   I love the scalloped leaves of this peony and the smell is out of this world.  I may need to cut some of these and place them throughout the house.  The whole point of our garden was to have fresh flowers whenever we could and these peonies are stunning.

Our blackberries have gazillions of flowers on them this year.  When we were living in California, a friend of mine made some blackberry liquor and gave it to us as a gift.  It was amazing and the bottle she used for presentation was glorious.  It looked like some sort of potion from a Harry Potter movie.  The Payaso asked if I would try making some blackberry liquor this year and I quickly accepted the challenge.  Though, I have also been considering using the blackberries to make moonshine.  The husband of a coworker made an apple pie moonshine that was out of this world.  It’ll also be a good way to put our mason jars to use.  Something tells me based on the number of blackberry flowers, I’ll be able to make both.

Give these cinnamon rolls a shot.  I’m confident you’ll love how easy they are to put together and the taste is perfect with a nice cup of coffee.  They’d be a great item to take to a brunch (or a snack after working in the yard).  Play around with the flavor combinations to use what’s in your pantry .  I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!  Thanks for reading, and please like, comment or share with your friends.  Happy Sunday!