Sometimes I think people get the wrong idea of what my kitchen looks like.
They assume my kids eat quinoa patties for breakfast, kale salad for lunch and braised lamb with mint sauce for dinner every night and sugar is a dirty word and something like a cinnamon roll fall under the “he who shall not be named” category of forbidden words.
That simply isn’t true. My approach to healthy eating is this, keep the ingredients real, traditionally farmed and prepared, organic whenever possible and finally – cook and eat with joy.
My little chef Vivi, has been wanting to make cinnamon rolls all week. I did what many parents do and used the cinnamon rolls as a reward after a long day of errands and being as quiet as a church mouse during meetings that I had for work. We played hard outside and then came in to warm up and had a blast baking and coming up with a recipe.
You could buy cinnamon rolls in a tube, pop them open, throw them in the oven and frost them with whatever that is that comes in that plastic tub stuck in the butt of the tube. Sure they will taste just fine, your kids will gobble them down but in my opinion those aren’t cinnamon rolls. They are processed, industrialized, cinnamon roll like products.
Just take 10 more minutes and make them from scratch. Work in some math problems with your kids while measuring out the ingredients. Let them make a little mess with the flour. Teach them how to knead dough (not necessary so perfect opportunity to just take a minute and practice), let them steal some bites of the cinnamon sugar combo and make cinnamon rolls that are not perfectly shaped.
This mascarpone frosting takes just a minute to make and has 4 ingredients. The frosting in the butt of the tube has probably three times that number. Take the time to make treats and sweets from scratch and you will feel good about eating the result of your effort. Eating healthy can simply mean eating unprocessed foods, by taking the time to avoid those industrialized ingredients you are automatically eating better!
Spelt Flour Cinnamon Rolls with Mascarpone Frosting
Ingredients
- 3 cups spelt flour you could use another flour as well, unbleached all purpose, wheat
- 2.5 tsp baking powder
- 1 tsp unrefined sea salt
- 3/4-1 cup butter milk whole fat and from grass fed cows. No buttermilk? Just add a few teaspoons of vinegar to whole milk and let sit for 5 minutes
- 1/8 cup organic sugar
- 1/8 cup sucanat or brown sugar
- 2 T cinnamon (honestly I just shake out the cinnamon until it looks good, 1-2T would be good enough
- 5 T grass fed butter melted
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Combine the dry ingredients and stir in the buttermilk until a dough forms. Roll the dough out into a rectangle.
Combine
- Sugars and cinnamon
- Brush melted butter onto the rolled out dough and then coat with the cinnamon/sugar combo. Start rolling the dough, brushing with butter as you go.
- Slice the rolled dough log into desired sized cinnamon rolls and brush with any remaining butter.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes. Remove and enjoy as is or make my mascarpone frosting which can be found below.
Mascarpone Frosting
Ingredients
- 1 cup homemade mascarpone cheese
- 4 T butter grass fed- softened
- 1 to 1/2 cups organic powdered sugar
- 2 tsp vanilla
- Options: sweeten with dates instead blend in food processor
- Add 1 tsp almond extract along with vanilla
Instructions
- Combine in a food processor or in a bowl with beaters, the butter and mascarpone. Add in vanilla and then powdered sugar until well combined.