Cinnabons

Since I have lived in the US for a year I am in love with Cinnabons. Well, not just Cinnabons ... pretty much every sweet food that was new to me ... waffles or pancakes with syrup, brownies, frozen yoghurt, s'mores (totally addicted!), cookies, muffins, cupcakes, frosting, cheesecakes ... well, I could go on for a while ... ;-) but I guess you get the point! Actually the fact that I could not buy all those things back home got me into baking. If you can't buy it you gotta try making it yourself! Since that time I have been looking for the perfect recipes for certain things - including also Cinnabons! I have tried a few recipes already now and then ... they weren't bad but I still have not found the really perfect one! So today I tried another one. I found the recipe on Laura Rebecca's Kitchen. As I live in Germany and we use another metric system I always have to "translate" parts of the recipe. When something states that I have to use 1 package I always have to make sure that a "package" is actually the same amount as one package contains overhere. So I checked how much yeast in one package is ... but when reading the recipe I unfortunately made a simple error - I read that one package of dry yeast would contain 1 oz. Not familiar with using oz as measurements I translated this in grams ... and was startled. I could not possibly use 30grams of dry yeast for this amount of flour! According to the package of the dry yeast this would be WAY to much! A bit more than one package would be fine. Well, after deciding not to bother too much - I simply used two packages. This actually is about 1/2 oz of dry yeast - which is alot more than the recipe called for - but it worked perfectly. :-)
The other problem I had was that I didn't know what size a regular cake pan has ... So I just used my regular baking sheet ... which was probably a bit too big. I like when there is no room between the buns. I don't know whether this is correct but I think that the buns are more soft and moist when they are very close together compared to when there is still room between them.
Other than that the buns turned out really nice. I love the icing! I am wondering whether it would make it even better if one would add more cream cheese to it ... I might try that next time. (Oh, I left out the lemon extract. For some reason I don't like the taste of lemon too much in cakes ... and I couldn't recall any lemony taste in the frosting of the buns that I had tried in the US. However, I think they come with different frostings!?) The buns were very nice and sticky and had a lovely texture. And the filling was perfect! (As I said I have already tried other recipes and for some reason often there simply was too little filling for too much dough ...) So I can really recommend this! :-) I will definitely do it again. Maybe I figure out the right pan size until then ...

And a few tips for bakers using recipes that are not in the metric system they are used to:
I try to "translate" as little as possible because with each conversion you are likely to make the whole thing less exact. I bought for example measuring cups and spoons and even a few cake pans when I was lucky enough to get them or when traveling and use them as often as possible. If I don't have an appropriate measuring device I "translate" the amount given into grams and use a regular scale to weigh the stuff. Because I don't like calculating too much I have a copy of "metric equivalent charts" pinned to my fridge. I got mine from a book but you can easily find them on the internet and print them out. This really helps me alot!
And a thing that I just figured out recently: I always have big trouble when recipes state measurement in inches (like the thickness of your dough or pan sizes). We use centimetres and I simply can never remember how much exactly one inch is and of course I could look it up ... but it just really annoyed me each time to do this. And then having to calculate didn't really make the affair more fun ... On my last ikea trip - and I think Ikea is pretty much everywhere around the world by now, or am I wrong? - I picked up one of these paper measuring tapes and looking at it it instantly hit me ... centimetres and inches!!! Now this paper measuring tape is also pinned to my fridge and every time something is stated in inches I can either just measure it or just look at the tape and know instantly how many centrimetres it is.
I know, some people might go "What, she could just have bought a regular measuring tape ... " Well, yes I could have. Just would have had to make sure that there is inches and centimetres on it - which is not always the case over here. However, I simply never got this idea! It took me years to come up with this! Years of agony and calculating ... or just asking my husband to calculate for me. ;-) So therefore even though it is very easy and simple - I am still proud of it! :-)


UPDATE:
I did try to double the cream cheese in the recipe meanwhile. I really loved it. However, I am not sure whether it tastes like the original Cinnabon icing anymore ... but didn't care too much either. ;-)