Why Do I Do This Every Year?!?!

 I know it's Christmas, and I should be posting about all the good cheer and happiness, but I just finished baking a recipe that I HATE preparing (However, I do like eating them).  Like, I really effing hate it.  I fix it every year.  Sometimes more than once a year.  

Pioneer Woman Cinnamon Rolls.  

I have a love hate relationship with them.  They're such good cinnamon rolls.  So good.  They have lots of filling, a delicious moist dough.  They smell amazing when you're baking them.  It makes a TON.  It makes about 48-50!!!  Clearly I give them away.  No one needs that many rolls- or else you'll have rolls that don't fit in your pants.  (LOL)

To make them???  Well- I will say one benefit to making them is it's like child birth and you don't remember how much it sucks . . . until the next year you go to make them.  It all comes back to you.  It takes approximately 10 cups of flour and 1.25lbs of butter and 3 cups of sugar . . . so it's super healthy.  (thus the reason we only have them once a year- or on a snow day  . . . so once a year at Christmas). 

The reason they're so mind numbingly annoying is the dough is super wet.  You have to pour half the dough out on the counter and then you have to somehow roll this wet, yeasty monstrosity out into a rectangle.  I swear I can literally see it rising ( in fact, I did not put a towel over it when it was set to the side to rise, and it rose so high- the dough spilled out all over everywhere).  Then, once you've manhandled this dough into a rectangle- The Pioneer Woman's version calls for pouring a cup of melted butter over the rolled out dough.  That is an utter disaster.  You've got flour all over the counter so the dough supposedly won't stick (but it does) and then you have melted butter all over the flour because as you're rolling your dough up- the butter is splooshing out the side.  It's a mess. This year I decided to try something different.  I decided to try softened butter and I tried to smother the softened butter all of the dough.  That worked pretty well- except for some spots where I was rubbing the butter onto the dough and I rubbed a hole in the dough.  I will say despite it being SUPER messy because my heads were COVERED in butter, at least the butter didn't sploosh out onto the counter.  Rolling the dough up?  That's usually where cussing occurs.  You're trying to multitask with only two hands.  You're trying to roll the dough up, somehow unsticking it from the counter, while keeping the dough from tearing, prep the pans, all while Alexa is playing chase with the dog and the dog is barking and doing run by licks on the flour that has hit the floor.  And now repeat the entire annoying process with the second half of the dough.  

But then you smell them baking, and sneak a little bite (just to make sure you're not gifting people with gross baked goods) and you've already forgotten the Clark Griswald tempter tantrum you pitched while you were prepping them.