A little Sunday baking

Our church is having a fundraiser for missions next weekend. They had a dinner/auction for missions in September and one item brought in so much money, the missions director found a way to capitalize on it.

Our girls' "adopted" grandma is famous in our church for her homemade cinnamon rolls. One pan of them raised $200 at the missions auction. Someone approached the missions director and suggested that Grandma teach people how to make them for a donation to missions. Grandma agreed and now has to figure out how to help 17 people learn to make cinnamon rolls, who probably have never attempted to make any sort of bread in their lives.

The "students" are supposed to bring a 9x13-inch pan, which they will take home filled with their morning's work. The problem is that Grandma makes a huge batch every time she bakes them. And she's one of those natural cooks who knows how it's supposed to look and adds the ingredients until it's right, rather than being a slave to a recipe. That makes scaling the recipe down a challenge.

We were discussing it all this morning and, since she gave me her recipe several years ago, I told her if I got time, I'd try making a half batch of dough and see how many rolls it made. It made this 9x13 pan, plus an 8x11 pan.

My family was delighted.

Next time, I decided, I'll try one-third of the recipe and see if that works out right for filling one pan.

My family was ecstatic. Until I suggested I might send them with Daddy when he goes hunting. Then there was less rejoicing by 2/3.

Mine don't taste like Grandma's (isn't that always the way of things?) but my family is still willing to choke them down, inferior though they are. I probably should have signed up for the class so I could get her secrets for the filling and glaze to go with the dough recipe. I didn't remember the cinnamon rolls when we started planning our girls weekend, though.

So, we are doomed to having inferior cinnamon rolls. For some reason, they aren't complaining.