Sour Cream Cinnamon Twists

My husband and I are in love with honey lime chicken enchiladas. They are blow your mind away delicious. But after I've made them, I always run into this dilemma: sour cream. No, I'm not talking about the sour cream you put on your baked potato or taco. We're talking cream gone bad. Well, not exactly bad, because it is good for something: Sour Cream Cinnamon Twists.



I always think of the "One Semester of Spanish Love Song" when I hear the words "cinnamon twist" even though there is nothing remotely Latino about this recipe. On the contrary, this recipe comes from my great grandma--a shepherd's wife. Her cow was a plentiful source of milk and cream, and the cream sometimes went sour (it happens to the best of us). Thus she made this delicious treat. They're way better than any cinnamon twist you buy in the doughnut section of the grocery store.

You'd think this would be a tricky and time consuming recipe. Nope! Piece of cake!

Sour Cream Cinnamon Twists
Ingredients:
1 C liquid sour cream (not the baked potato kind) (or you can use half and half with a bit of vinegar added to it)
2 T shortening
3 T sugar
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp baking soda
1 egg, well beaten
1 pkg yeast (2 1/2 tsp)
3 C flour
Butter, cinnamon, sugar, and brown sugar--to taste
Powdered sugar and vanilla (for glaze)

Bring sour cream to a boil and remove from heat. Add shortening, sugar, salt, and soda. Stir. Let cool slightly before mixing in the egg and yeast (you don't want the yeast to die or the egg to instantly cook, but you want it to be warm still). Add 1/2 cup of flour. Once mixed, add remaining flour. I can never quite get the full 3 cups of flour kneaded in without creating a really tough dough, so I usually shoot for about 2.5 instead. Knead dough for 30 seconds, then cover and let rest for 15 minutes.

On a slightly floured surface, roll dough out to a 18"x6" rectangle (approximately). Spread melted butter over the dough (go with as much as you want, but don't be too skimpy). Sprinkle with ample amounts of sugar, cinnamon, and brown sugar (once again, as much as you want). Fold dough in half hotdog style (so now you'll have an 18"x3" rectangle). Cut into 1" strips (perpendicular to the fold). It will make about 18 strips. Simultaneously stretch and twist each strip (twist them as much as you can) and place on greased cookie sheet. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in warm place for about 1 hour. I put the cookie sheet on my stove top and turned the oven to warm while it was rising, and this seemed to work really well. There's a good chance your twists will untwist a little while rising.

Bake at 400 degrees for 10-12 minutes. Let cool, then drizzle with a light glaze. For the glaze, start with about a cup of powdered sugar and a little splash of vanilla, then add water until a drizzle-able consistency is reached. It really doesn't take much water, so be careful. If you melted a bit too much butter when you were doing the cinnamon/sugar thing, go ahead and add the extra to the glaze. Butter makes everything better.

Let the glaze dry, and then voila! Sour Cream Cinnamon Twists!


You can definitely vary the size of these twists. Rolling it out to 18"x6" makes pretty short twists, as you can see. You can roll it out to different dimensions to get longer twists if you'd like. Also keep in mind the more you stretch them while twisting, the skinnier they will be. Mine are a bit short and chubby, but when my mom makes these, they end up skinnier and longer. She must stretch hers out more. But these are all just superficial details--the bottom line is they are good no matter what they look like.