Cooking with Juls: Cheater Cinnamon Rolls

I used to hate to make dough. Its one thing in cooking, I do not seem to be very good at. Then I got a bread machine!! Greatest thing ever.

This Recipe is very versatile. You can make pecan sticky buns, or cinnamon rolls from it. I started making cinnamon rolls when I was about 12. Ive tweaked the recipe to my liking .

1 loaf of frozen bread dough, or u can make white dough from scratch, or in a bread machine.
1/4 cup cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp of ground cloves
3/4 cup sugar( can use a half cup of white and 1/4 of brown)
3/4 to a whole stick of real butter, softened.
2 tablespoons flour
extra flour for rolling.
Additions:
Raisins, nuts, cran-raisins, pecans.......whatever u like. Ive even taken a cpl of apples, chopped them up and added them. Today we r making straight cinnamon rolls, not nuts or raisins. My Hubby doesn't like them in his cinnamon rolls.

Place the (1to 1.5 pound loaf )of dough in a greased plastic container, three times the size of the loaf. Cover with a damp kitchen towel and let rise until double in size.

Mix the cinnamon, sugar, nutmeg and cloves.

Roll out the dough on a floured surface. Flour your rolling pin too. Roll into a rectangle. Work quickly, the dough doesn't like to be over worked, you'll have tough rolls otherwise. about 12-14 inches x 8 inches.

Spread the butter evenly on the dough with a rubber spatula. Sprinkle with the sugar mix, then sprinkle about 2 tablespoons off flour over the sugar mixture. Add your nuts and/or raisins at this point, spread evenly over the dough.

How you roll the dough rectangle up depends on how big of rolls u want. If u roll the small side up, you'll have about 7 Giant rolls. If you roll the long ways up, you'll have more smaller rolls. We went the long ways for today's rolls. Take the dough and roll it into a cylinder.

Slice the rolled up dough into about one inch slices. Do not use a serrated edged knife, I found this out the hard way. Has to be a smooth edged sharp knife. Some say use dental floss, but i tried it and I didn't like the results. Place into a prepared glass square or round baking pan I like to use a little vegetable oil and flour. I usually sweep up the flour I used to rolled the dough out on, into my baking pan. Dont worry about the extra cinnamon, its fine.

Cover with a moistened kitchen towel and rise again until about double. About 30-60 minutes, depending on how warm the spot is u set them to rise. I preheat the oven at 200 then shut it off and open the door for about 3 minutes and then place my dough inside and shut the oven door. These are the same rolls as above, doubled in size.