Christmas Cinnamon Rolls/Mounds

Oysters, cinnamon rolls, fruit salad, and hot chocolate. Sounds quite delicious! That's my husband's family's traditional Christmas breakfast. It doesn't sound much like a breakfast of champions for a diabetic, does it? I guess the oysters would be fine, if they weren't cooked in Bisquick like pancakes. But I don't even like oysters to begin with so I guess there's not a whole lot left for me to enjoy except a little bit of fruit salad. It's times like this when I wish that I could be on medication so that I don't have to worry quite as much about my diet! However, I really want to avoid taking more meds so I had to find an alternative. I scoured the internet for low carb cinnamon roll recipes and finally found a few that I was able to combine to make my very own recipe! I call them: Cinnamon Mounds! I'll explain why later.

I really hate finding recipes online that are about 95% pictures but can understand why people take pictures every step of the way. Some people are more visual learners. But I just want to READ a recipe and ignore all the other junk. However, I feel the need to make this educational and entertaining so I took a few unnecessary pictures. I'm sorry if you are like me and just want to read the recipe.

Irene's Cinnamon Mounds
Ingredients for mounds:
2 cups almond flour
1/8 tsp salt
1/2 Tbsp baking soda
1 Tbsp baking powder
3 Tbsp flax seed (optional, but more fiber=more health benefits!)
2 eggs
2 Tbsp unsweetened applesauce
1 Tbsp unsweetened almond milk
1 Tbsp honey

 I tried to do one of those cool ingredient pictures you see on every other blog but it didn't turn out that great. I'm just not much of a photographer (or baker).

 Filling:
1 1/2 Tbsp melted butter
1 Tbsp cinnamon
1/4 cup Splenda/sucralose (I used Walmart brand sucralose)

Icing:
3 oz cream cheese
3 Tbsp unsweetened almond milk
1/2 cup splenda

1) Add dry ingredients to medium sized mixing bowl. Add wet ingredients to small bowl and combine. Pour wet mixture into dry mixture and stir.

This is where I think I messed up a little bit. My tablespoons of applesauce turned out to be pretty heaping and I think it made this stuff just too sticky. I read that it would be sticky anyway, but this was beyond the realm of sticky and more like nasty goop (that just happened to smell like cinnamon apples)!

2) Form mixture into a ball and refrigerate at least 20 minutes until harder. I kept mine in all day because I ran out of energy and simply could not get past this point. 

3) Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Spray a piece of wax paper with cooking spray (clever, never thought of this before) and press dough flat into a rectangle. I highly suggest using your hands because it is just too sticky for a rolling pin. 

4) For the filling: Combine splenda and cinnamon in small bowl. Brush melted butter onto flattened dough then sprinkle with cinnamon/splenda mixture. 

5) Using a pizza cutter (or knife, or whatever you have), cut 5 strips to roll up into rolls. 

Looks pretty great, right? Oh, you just wait!

6) Begin at one end and roll each strip with the cinnamon/splenda mixture inside. The first strip rolled beautifully. The rest stuck to the paper and my fingers like nothing else! I tried squeezing the cracks together but that just broke the dough apart more and made it stick even more to my fingers. These made gigantic rolls/mounds so I cut them in half and glooped them in a greased baking dish. 

I was sad and I must admit, the evil pregnancy hormones reared their ugly heads and made me cry a tiny bit. Every past baking failure came flooding back into my head. But I quickly realized that the way they look will not affect how they taste and I was just fine!

7) Place in oven and bake for 25 minutes. They will be browned along the edges and on the top. 

8) Icing: Using an electric mixer, mix cream cheese and milk until well combined. It will be a little runny. Add splenda and continue mixing until smooth. Spoon over cinnamon rolls after they come out of the oven. 

They don't look too bad covered in icing!

It tasted pretty good but left that typical sucralose after-taste in my mouth.

Overall, I think these are good as long as I call them cinnamon mounds. Adjusting expectations can often help you view things differently! As long as I don't expect this to be just like a cinnamon roll, I can be happy and enjoy my mound. :-)