Cooking with Sam and Gideon! (Again, and with more burned things this time!)

 Last night, I suggested to Gideon that we make the can of cinnamon rolls I impulse-purchased a couple days prior. To spare you all the annoying exposition, I'll cut to chase:

It was a disaster. 

"Oh, Sam, how can you screw up cinnamon rolls?" you say. "It can't be that hard; the instructions are on the can." You have made a fair point but have also grossly overestimated my attention span and my knowledge of how cooking works. Before I put the cinnamon rolls in the oven, Gideon took a photo of me holding the uncooked dough to document our endeavor. (At this point, he still had faith in my ability to bake and generally function properly.) 

 

"Woah, are those cinnamon rolls still attached? Aren't you supposed to separate them before baking them?" you ask. Why, yes you are. Why didn't I take the time to separate the cinnamon rolls and place them into a round baking pan, allowing them to all bake through at the same time? I have two reasons for this decision:

1. We don't have a round baking pan.
2. I didn't want to.

So I plopped my cinnamon loaf in the oven, believing it would be ready for consumption in the 8 to 10 minutes specified on the package. Five minutes passed. I checked the cinnamon loaf, removed it from the oven and deemed it too-doughy. Back in the oven it went. 

Five minutes after that, the top of the cinnamon rolls were slightly brown but the loaf seemed to have baked perfectly. Basking in my glory, I asked Gideon to put the icing on them so that I could continue to scream obscenities every time Adam Levine spoke on The Voice. He did. We dug in. 

It was a disaster. The dough clung to the loaf like melted provolone, and even though we had already put the icing on the rolls, I decided we had to put them back in again. Before we did, Gideon cut off the cooked pieces to avoid burning them. (I would not have thought of this. I know because I tried to separate the half-cooked cinnamon rolls instead, causing a minor burn on my left index finger.) Then, we went on the balcony to talk.

By the time we had the sense to return to the kitchen, the icing had crystallized onto the chewy, sticky cinnamon rolls. I waywardly chose to taste the crystallized icing, and I learned that it does not taste good in any sense of the word. I rationalized my decision by choosing to blog about it and warn all of you. So now, instead of being the dumb woman who overcooked a cinnamon loaf with icing on it and then tasted the burned, crystallized icing, I am a martyr who has prevented others from suffering a similar fate. Praise be unto me. 

Here is the photo Gideon took after the cinnamon rolls came out of the oven for the last time: 

I know I look happy, but I was keeping a strong front for the cat. It was a disaster. Please zoom to see how disastrous this truly was.

I learned nothing from this except for how disappointing it is to expect delicious cinnamon rolls and then to eat burned, crystallized icing instead.