Christmas Card and Cinnamon Rolls

December 19, 2017 | Rob

In an attempt to spread holiday cheer, we made Christmas cards to send out to some family and friends, and cinnamon rolls to give to some of our neighbors and primary kids.

Snail mail is pretty boring these days. 90% of it is ads and credit card offers, and the rest is usually bills. That's why I like the tradition of sending Christmas cards. For once during the year, it gives you something to look forward to when you get the mail.

Websites like Vistaprint make it pretty easy and increasingly affordable to make your own custom cards from templates. It can still get pricey though, especially when you factor in the cost of stamps. Still, I think it is worth it for us. Especially with us living some distance away from so much of our family and friends, and knowing that the distance between us will only increase in the coming months.

Since I am somewhat adept with Adobe Illustrator, I like to forgo the custom templates, start with a blank slate, and design my own card from scratch. That's what we did this year, and I was happy with how it turned out. 

We drove out to Lost Dutchman State Park after church one Sunday to take the photo we used. It turned that there was one of those gorgeous Arizona desert sunsets happening by the time we got there. But we were losing daylight fast, and also losing the patience of a 1-year-od. So, I had to hurry and find a spot for the photo and get the camera set up before it was too late.

The photo that we used was one of the first; all the rest were too dark, and most of them featured an uncooperative baby. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too shabby either. It does a good job of betraying the frustration that I was experiencing as my camera kept falling off my makeshift stroller tripod, and the baby was fussing.

Knowing that this was probably going to be our last Christmas in Arizona, I wanted to highlight the unique spirit of celebrating Christmas in the non-traditional setting of the desert.

Cinnamon rolls have nothing to do with Arizona or Christmas, but they are my favorite food. When I see one at a bakery, I am seldom able to resist its sweet siren song. I've only tried to make them from scratch once before, without success. Undaunted, I decided to give it another shot.

The economies of scale principle definitely applies to making cinnamon rolls. They are a lot of trouble to make, so if you are going to make them, you better make a lot of them. That's why I thought they would make a good Christmas treat to share. 

Making them from scratch allowed me to make them exactly the way that I like them by modifying recipes I found online. 

Mostly, I used the basic recipe from the Pioneer Woman cooking blog, found here. It was pretty easy to follow.

I thought it would be fun to liven them up a bit with orange, kind of like those amazing orange rolls you can get at the Lion House restaurant. So, I added the zest of a couple tangelos from our backyard to the dough.

I like the health benefits of whole wheat flour, but I don't like the taste. So I often compromise when baking. I used about 20% whole wheat flour.

I like cream cheese icing far more that regular icing, which I find to be too sweet. So I substituted the ingredients from this recipe for the icing.

I ended up with about 50 cinnamon rolls, which I put into 7 round tins for baking. I was pretty happy with how they turned out. I only would have added more zest from the tangelos because I couldn't really taste it enough.

We've been very blessed this year with a lot of love and support from family and friends as we learn the ropes of parenthood. Many have offered to watch Alex for us or donated some of their old baby clothes and such. Although we can't get Christmas cards and/or cinnamon rolls to everyone, we do hope that all of our friends and family have a wonderful Christmas or Hanukkah, and a great 2018!