The Healthy My Ass Cookbook

Easy Cinnamon Crispies

A thin crispy cinnamon and sugar pastry

Ingredients:

Directions:

Grease one or more 15x10" or larger cookie sheets with butter.

With one rack in the center of the oven, preheat to 350°F.

Open the Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls and discard the icing.  (If anyone comes up with another use for the icing, I'd love to hear about it.)

Spread a generous layer of Sugar on a surface on which you can use a rolling pin.  Press the bottom side of a roll (the side without the cinnamon coating) into the sugar and flatten with your hands.  Turn it over so the other side is in the sugar, sprinkle top with cinnamon and sugar and press to flatten out with your hands.  Repeat, only this time use a rolling pin to roll out the dough.  Add more cinnamon and sugar each time you flip it as needed to prevent it from sticking to the surface or the rolling pin.  Continue until you have a 7-8" diameter circle, or a 7x9" oblong.  Transfer to the cookie sheet.  Repeat with another roll.

Bake on the center rack for 6 to 8 minutes.  Start watching them closely after 5 minutes to avoid burning.  They should be done about 2 minutes after the surface sugar melts and glazes over.  Remove them from the oven and let them cool on the cookie sheet on a cooling rack just until you can quickly transfer with a spatula to a rack to cool.  Do not let them cool any longer than 2 minutes on the cookie sheet.

Clean any sugar from the surface of the cookie sheet, grease with butter and repeat with the six remaining rolls.

Notes:

The nutritional information may not be very accurate.  The data I got from the Pillsbury package included the icing, which of course is not used in this recipe.  However, since I did not have a good feel for how much sugar and cinnamon were used, I omitted those ingredients from the nutritional calculations, assuming they would be similar to the nutritional data of the icing.

On a whim I tried using Baker's Sugar, a.k.a. Superfine Sugar or Caster Sugar, thinking it would melt and glaze quicker but I didn't see any appreciable difference and may even have had the opposite effect of what I was looking for.

I've also made these with Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough (8 oz.), by simply cutting the roll into 8 equal slices (one ounce each) and rolling to 5-6" in diameter.  They are similar, yet different in that they are smaller, less sweet and lighter or flakier.  The nutritional information is about the same an therefore equally inaccurate.  I think these are my favorite.

Finally, I've made these with Pillsbury Flaky Twists with Icing (13 oz.), omitting the icing of course as with the Cinnamon Rolls.  These are similar to the Crescent Rolls in being lighter or flakier than the Cinnamon Rolls, but with the same sweet and cinnamon taste as the Cinnamon Rolls.  The still inaccurate nutritional information says these are 180 calories each.