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In a land where the weather is perfect and the roads are winding there is a place called Los Gatos Cafe, in (appropriately) Los Gatos California.  It is here where the most buttery, flakey, cinnamon-y, sweet & ooeygooey delicious creation known as Cinnamon Roll lives.  Oh AND it’s the size of your head… no joke.  This is the kind of thing you wear stretch pants to eat.

Los Gatos Cafe Cinnamon Roll

Since using all our vacation on eating cinnamon rolls is probably not the best use of our time off I’ve been forced to come up with an alternate plan.  Crack the magical witchcraft code that is the Los Gatos Cafe cinnamon roll.   There are many reasons why I love the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.  My top reason of late is that we see 100% eye to eye on what makes for a solid cinnamon roll experience which is equal parts bread to gooey deliciousness.  I used her recipe with some minor modifications as my starting point.

Cinnamon, Sugar, Brown Sugar & Butter

Rolling up a “log” of deliciousness.

Be prepared, as with anything worth doing, it’s messy.  But it’s a super tasty mess and somehow that’s better in my book.

Cut the log and smile at the happy little swirls.  While these swirls are happy, these little guys are WAY too cozy.  Make sure you give them plenty of room or else it won’t cook all the way — and if you’re anything like me you’ll end up with a sad little tummy because you didn’t stop long enough to realize you just ate a half a roll of raw dough.

So, I’m going to make a statement that some would call blasphemy.  I do not like cream cheese based icing.  There, I said it.  Perhaps on a carrot or red velvet cake but not on my cinnamon roll.  Enter, the icing:

Hot & fresh out of the oven! Go ahead, use a heavy hand when icing!

Fortunately I made two batches and in my second pan I provided a little extra growing room for the rolls.   My end result?  This…

I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out.  If you want to make your house guests move in, make these.  If you want them to leave, put them out on the porch.  These are worth following around.  Still, they aren’t an exact match to the mystery monster roll of Los Gatos.  So I’ll ponder, perhaps do some on location research, and give it another go here soon.