Recipe: Iced Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls

Right now there are so many scrumptious looking Fall and Thanksgiving recipes showing up all over the internet, and since I had a covered dish meeting to attend last night, I decided to use the opportunity to make one of them.

I found several similar recipes for varieties of sweet buns and so I modified and created my own recipe for pumpkin cinnamon rolls.  I will advertise it as "simple, but messy."  Do not be deterred by the "messy" part - the rolls came out delicious.  It is impossible hard to eat just one.

Ingredients for the rolls:

1 refrigerated roll of Pillsbury crescent rolls
pumpkin butter
brown sugar
cinnamon

Note:  My grocery store did not carry pumpkin butter, so I had to search at a local farm market.  You know, the kind of place where they sell all those jars of homemade stuff.  That's where I found it.

As for the brown sugar and cinnamon, I didn't measure.  Just sprinkle it on until it looks right.

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees, and roll out the dough onto a cookie sheet or other flat surface.
Press the perforations in the dough together to eliminate the seams.

Spread pumpkin butter onto the dough.

Sprinkle generously with brown sugar.

Sprinkle with cinnamon.

Starting with the short end of the dough, carefully roll it all up.

It may be starting to get messy at this point, but don't stop now.

Cut the roll into about 10 smaller rolls, and this is where it can get really messy.  I learned very quickly that even a very sharp knife makes messy, squashed, blobby rolls.  So, I cut the rolls off using a piece of thread.  Put the thread under the roll, pull it up on each side, cross each end over, and pull the ends until it cuts through.  I suppose unflavored dental floss would work great, too.

Place them into a greased 8 x 8 baking dish.  See how blobby and misshapen they look?  I almost bailed out and tossed them at this point, but I decided to press on, bake them up, and see what happens.

Bake them for about 16 to 18 minutes, until nicely browned.  Remove from the oven and let them sit for about 10 minutes while you mix up the icing.

Ingredients for the creme cheese icing:

3 ounces softened creme cheese
1/2 stick butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

1/2 teaspoon sugar
3 tablespoons milk

In a medium bowl, mix the cream cheese and butter together.  Then whisk in the confectioners' sugar, vanilla, and milk until smooth.

Spread the icing over the slightly warm rolls.  I ended up with way more icing than I needed, so it is possible I may be making more of these tasty morsels later this week.

Enjoy!