I like to dabble with baking, trying new and interesting ways of creating sweet delectable treats. And let me tell you, where that’s concerned this recipe takes the cake (pun intended)! Every bite of this cake tastes exactly like a cinnamon roll. It is unbelievably good. I took some of this to work and one of my co-workers said it was an absolutely wicked treat. You must try this one.

So let’s talk about making this cake..

Lesson Learned 1 – The ingredients for the cake are a bit untraditional: Most cake recipes use a combination of baking soda and baking powder, usually a teaspoonful or less of each, as leavening agents for the batter. This particular cake recipe uses 4 teaspoons of baking powder and no baking soda. It seems like a lot of baking powder, but what that amount actually does is create a yeasty bread-like quality for the cake. You can see in the picture below the bubbles created by using the large amount of baking powder. It was interesting to see its affect on the batter. And when you think about it, cinnamon rolls tend to have a texture that’s more like bread than cake, so using the larger amount of baking powder to create that consistency makes sense.

Another somewhat non traditional aspect to making the batter is adding the melted butter. Once you’ve combined all the ingredients together, you slowly add the melted butter into the batter. It is important to add it slowly so that the butter fully incorporates. I poured a little in at a time, mixed it in, and repeated that process until all the melted butter was fully incorporated into the batter. It gave the batter the luxurious consistency you see below.

Before adding the melted butter the cake batter will look a little lumpy. As you slowly add the melted butter the lumps will disappear.

Lesson Learned 2 – The cinnamon topping will be thick in consistency: A lot of cinnamon cake recipes have more of a streusel-like mixture that you incorporate into cake batter. The topping for this cake is thicker and more frosting-like as you can see from the picture below.

When preparing this mixture it’s very important the butter be as soft as possible without melting it. I put the butter in the microwave and kept nuking it in 10 second increments until it was slightly runny along the edges. You can see from the picture below how soft the butter was before I mixed it with the other topping ingredients.

Lesson Learned 3 – How to combine the cinnamon and cake batter: Many recipes similar to this require sprinkling the topping on the batter and using a knife to swirl it down into the cake. You don’t need to do that with this recipe. All you need to do is dollop the cinnamon mixture on top and use a knife and spread it around. The cinnamon will permeate the batter while it bakes. Try to spread the mixture as close to the edges as possible. That way the end pieces will have some cinnamon in them as well.

Lesson Learned 4 – Add the glaze when the cake is still warm: Most of the time you wait for a cake to cool before you add glaze. With this recipe you add the glaze while the cake is still slightly warm. That way it seeps into the cake as well as stays on top. I prefer to make thicker glazes for this type of recipe so I combine heavy cream and milk with the vanilla and powdered sugar to get a rich, thick glaze.

I hope you decide to try this recipe. It is sinfully delicious and keeps well in an air tight container. I got two thumbs up on this on this one from my co-workers and my husband!

The Cake Right Out Of The Oven

Cinnamon Roll Cake