Making a Giant Snowflake Cinnamon Roll

We take turns hosting a Christmas brunch with my husband's family each year and even on those years it's not our turn to host we often bake up something yummy to bring with us.  This year Alec found a pretty snowflake shaped filled bread in one of his cooking magazines but wanted to turn it from a savory bread into a sweet bread. 

He decided to make a cinnamon roll and while I had debating about saving this recipe to share until next Christmas, I realized that the snowflake really is great for any winter party or occasion!  

Ingredients:

Dough:

1/2 cup warm water (around 110 degrees F)

2 teaspoons sugar

2 1/4 teaspoons yeast (or one quarter ounce packet of active dry yeast)

3 1/2 cups all purpose flour (with a little extra for dusting/ kneading)

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 sticks cold butter (12 tablespoons) cut into small pieces

1/2 cup milk

Filling:

1/4 cup melted butter (you can add more if you need but basically you just want a nice light layer to   hold the cinnamon/sugar in place without it running off the sides).

1 cup brown sugar

2 Tablespoons cinnamon

Glaze:

1 cup powdered sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla or maple extract

4 tablespoons milk or heavy cream

 Directions:

In a small bowl combine warm water, sugar, and yeast and set aside for about 5 minutes until foamy.  

In a separate bowl mix together flour, baking powder, and salt.  Add in the bits of butter and work with fingers or two knives (or pastry cutter) until butter is broken into pea- sized pieces. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and add in both yeast mix and milk. Stir with a wooden spoon until the flour is all mixed in

Once dough looks like a shaggy ball begin to knead with hands until you have a nice smooth dough ball.  Cover the dough ball in the bowl with a towel and let rise at room temperature until doubled in size-- about an hour to an hour and half.  

We prepared the dough in the afternoon on Christmas eve and left our dough ball to slow rise in the fridge overnight.  

The next morning Alec set the dough out on the table to warm up a bit and mixed up his filling/ melted the butter. 

He lightly floured his board and began kneading the dough 3 or 4 times until smooth.  He flattened it to about an inch thick and folded it in thirds like a letter. Then he rotated the dough 90 degrees, rolled it out and folded it in thirds again; repeating this process 4 times in total until he had a nice workable piece of dough. 

Once Alec had his dough all set he divided the dough into two equal pieces.  Rolling out one to a giant circle and using our circle baking pan as a template cut it to fit our pan. We then slid the dough onto our pan.  It was a brand new nonstick pan and we had zero problems with our dough sticking but you can grease the pan before if you're worried about that. 

He then rolled out and cut the second piece of dough into a somewhat matching circle and left it on his mat until he needed it. 

He brushed brushed the first piece of dough melted butter over the whole thing followed by a layer of cinnamon sugar.  He put the second circle on top and pinched the edges together all the way around so he had one giant circle filled with cinnamon/sugar.

Using a small glass bowl as his center he started making the cuts to form the snowflake.  First he cut through both layers of dough at 4 right angles; leaving the parts of the dough under the small bowl uncut.  

Then he cut each of those triangle pieces in half; now he had 8 equal cuts. Still making sure to leave the center untouched.

Each of those 8 triangles get cut one more time for a total of 16 pieces.  Then picking up two pieces side by side we twisted them away from one another 2-3 times and pinched the ends together.

Then he covered his snowflake with plastic wrap and left if for one final rise. We were running out of time at this point so we placed our snowflake near our fireplace for a quick rise.  We knew we just needed to wait until it was double in size.  

While waiting for it to rise we preheated our oven to 400. 

Once it had doubled in size he removed the plastic wrap and baked it in the oven (we didn't have any of our ends open up but if they do while rising you want to pinch them back together).  We baked it for 25-30 minutes.  We wanted it to be a nice golden brown color. 

While it was in the oven he mixed up a simple glaze using powdered sugar, vanilla extract,  and milk. While it was still pretty hot we spread the glaze mixture over the whole thing (we had some left that we just served alongside it in case anyone wanted a bit more sweetness). 

We served it warm and it was a HUGE hit with the whole family.

A bit fussy for sure but this would be great for any winter event where you want to add a little wow to your table. 

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