Cinnamon Roll Lovers, Help!

Baking By TatianaS Updated 28 Mar 2014 , 4:15am by OneHotMess

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TatianaS Posted 20 Mar 2014 , 5:47pm
post #1 of 11

AOne of my regular customers filling my ears for a while, about a cake she wants me to make for her husbands birthday. It is toasted cinnamon pecans in a soft white cake layered with cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream. Cake itself is not a problem but buttercream is a mystery for me. I tried a couple times to create cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream but it is always something not right about it. Any ideas how to make it?

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MBalaska Posted 20 Mar 2014 , 11:29pm
post #2 of 11
Quote:
Originally Posted by TatianaS 
"........ fudge laced buttercream. Cake itself is not a problem but buttercream is a mystery for me. I tried a couple times to create cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream but it is always something not right about it. Any ideas how to make it?

'Cinnamon Roll Fudge Laced Buttercream' for cinnamon rolls.  Never heard of it before.

 

I always make all butter-AMBC buttercream Icing for cinnamon rolls. Perhaps she is saying that they like chocolate fudge on their cinnamon rolls??  It would be easy to do.

cheers,

mb

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OneHotMess Posted 21 Mar 2014 , 2:22am
post #3 of 11

Unless by "cinnamon roll fudge" you mean the customer wants the brown, cinnamon-y "goo" laced through something like a vanilla frosting. You know, the cinnamon-butter-sugar stuff that lines each roll-layer. The cinnamon goo is the color of fudge, maybe, if you squint hard enough in the right light, but it's surely not fudge. Like, at all. In any light.

 

Ring up the customer and tell them to be more specific. I'd bake them a caketastrophe too, if they wanted "cinnamon roll fudge frosting." :???: (Now with extra Unicorn Sneezes, from the land of Utter Nonsense!) Hopefully she gave you enough time to nail down exactly what she wants, because this sounds like it could fall off the rails quick.

 

When you say "buttercream is a mystery to me," do you mean any type of any buttercream at all, or just this Special Cinnamon Delight stuff? I have exactly one BC recipe under my belt, so someone else is going to have to educate us both about what type of BC will support that type of fudge-gel-spice-swirl-unicorn add-in.

 

ETA: Someone like MB! :grin:

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enga Posted 21 Mar 2014 , 3:03am
post #4 of 11

This might give you a few ideas. The cake she is talking about sounds like a rendition of a old fashioned toasted pecan butter cake or a sour cream cinnamon pecan coffee cake.

 

http://laurassweetspot.com/2013/06/21/sour-cream-coffee-cake-with-chocolate-cinnamon-swirl/

 

*Wouldn't want you to make a hot mess from the land where pigs fly :lol:

 

Good Luck!!!  And please let us know what you come up with because it sounds delish!

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Eachna Posted 21 Mar 2014 , 3:48am
post #5 of 11

This is the "goo" recipe I use for sticky buns. Sticky buns are a variation of cinnamon buns, and sounds like what your customer may want. Reduce the liquid, leave the butter solid, and it's very close to buttercream as-is.

 

Goo: 
1/2 pound butter, melted
15 ounces brown sugar 
5 ounces honey 

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 cup cream 
1/2 cup water

 

If it doesn't work for you, try googling "sticky buns" instead of "cinnamon buns" for more versions of the topping.

 

Here is the filling I use inside the buns (in case it helps with the cake).


2 cups brown sugar 
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped

 

I combine these with one batch of brioche dough, which starts with 5 cups of flour and fills a 9x13 pan (just to give an idea of proportions).

 

My recipe comes originally from Joanne Chang, except it has a bit more cinnamon.

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Eachna Posted 21 Mar 2014 , 4:20am
post #6 of 11

Quote:

Originally Posted by Eachna 
 

This is the "goo" recipe I use for sticky buns. Sticky buns are a variation of cinnamon buns, and sounds like what your customer may want. Reduce the liquid, leave the butter solid, and it's very close to buttercream as-is.

Why is there no edit button?

 

edit: Even though I did read the whole thread, I somehow blanked out on the "fudge" part of the request. With both brown sugar and honey, you could easily add cocoa powder to the goo to make it a fudge-ey frosting. If that's what the customer wants. Or you could make this as-is with the brown goo version OneHotMess mentioned :D.

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TatianaS Posted 27 Mar 2014 , 3:22pm
post #7 of 11

AWhat a busy two weeks. Finally I have time to write. Thank you everybody!!! It was very helpful to get your suggestions. I was laughing like an idiot in a middle of night reading this thread. All of you are right, turned out my customer had no idea what she wanted. On question what it looks like, she said " gash, I don't know" . I asked her if she knows:) how cake taste, what texture or flavor so it would be more helpful to recreate what she had in the past. But what a surprise, she finally said the truth... "I read about some celebrity in a magazine, who had a toasted cinnamon pecans in a soft white cake layered with cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream at her party". After all she left satisfied. I mixed in white cake toasted cinnamon pecans and spread between layers fudge buttercream with swirls of caramel and covered it with SMB, and dripped fudge and caramel over it. Is anybody had such pain in a neck client? How to handle such people without hurting their feeling?

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Eachna Posted 27 Mar 2014 , 7:56pm
post #8 of 11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TatianaS 

What a busy two weeks. Finally I have time to write. Thank you everybody!!! It was very helpful to get your suggestions. I was laughing like an idiot in a middle of night reading this thread.
All of you are right, turned out my customer had no idea what she wanted. On question what it looks like, she said " gash, I don't know" . I asked her if she knows:) how cake taste, what texture or flavor so it would be more helpful to recreate what she had in the past. But what a surprise, she finally said the truth... "I read about some celebrity in a magazine, who had a toasted cinnamon pecans in a soft white cake layered with cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream at her party".
After all she left satisfied. I mixed in white cake toasted cinnamon pecans and spread between layers fudge buttercream with swirls of caramel and covered it with SMB, and dripped fudge and caramel over it.
Is anybody had such pain in a neck client? How to handle such people without hurting their feeling?

You're making me hungry LOL.

 

It's good to hear you sorted out the communication problems!

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OneHotMess Posted 28 Mar 2014 , 2:04am
post #9 of 11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TatianaS 

...
All of you are right, turned out my customer had no idea what she wanted. On question what it looks like, she said " gash, I don't know" . I asked her if she knows:) how cake taste, what texture or flavor so it would be more helpful to recreate what she had in the past. But what a surprise, she finally said the truth... "I read about some celebrity in a magazine, who had a toasted cinnamon pecans in a soft white cake layered with cinnamon roll fudge laced buttercream at her party".
...
Is anybody had such pain in a neck client? How to handle such people without hurting their feeling?

 

I'm going to stick my neck out here as someone who isn't a baking professional but does work in a psychiatric hospital, and thus has to know how to communicate with people who can be extremely difficult at times: you had to have the "details" conversation at the beginning of this whole endeavor.

Without that conversation, you were arguably left with, "Stab blindly in the dark and ask for help from the Intarwebz," and, "Try to put something edible together and hope to the cake gods that it's what the client wants, without knowing what the client wants, because you're a kind person who was somehow mistaken for one of those nifty floormat things: MAKE CAKE HERE!"

 

I would have sent her an email saying that I wouldn't do the cake without knowing EXACTLY, in writing, what she wants, because...well, because of some fluffy reason that makes her feel like a wonderful person and absolves her of all personal responsibility - because you know how much people who are wrong LOVE to be told they are wrong. That's usually the point in time where they start to throw things.

 

Tell her you can't make the cake without more detail because it's too important of an event to mess up. Because you care deeply about what she thinks of your work. Because the moon is in the seventh house and Venus is in retrograde. Whatever. But deep down because, y'know, well, because she was a twit who wasn't specific in her request and you aren't a psychic who knows how to translate "cinnamon fudge swirl" into "functional cake output."

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TheNerdyBaker Posted 28 Mar 2014 , 2:42am
post #10 of 11

Quote:

Originally Posted by OneHotMess 
 

 

I'm going to stick my neck out here as someone who isn't a baking professional but does work in a psychiatric hospital, and thus has to know how to communicate with people who can be extremely difficult at times: you had to have the "details" conversation at the beginning of this whole endeavor.

Without that conversation, you were arguably left with, "Stab blindly in the dark and ask for help from the Intarwebz," and, "Try to put something edible together and hope to the cake gods that it's what the client wants, without knowing what the client wants, because you're a kind person who was somehow mistaken for one of those nifty floormat things: MAKE CAKE HERE!"

 

I would have sent her an email saying that I wouldn't do the cake without knowing EXACTLY, in writing, what she wants, because...well, because of some fluffy reason that makes her feel like a wonderful person and absolves her of all personal responsibility - because you know how much people who are wrong LOVE to be told they are wrong. That's usually the point in time where they start to throw things.

 

Tell her you can't make the cake without more detail because it's too important of an event to mess up. Because you care deeply about what she thinks of your work. Because the moon is in the seventh house and Venus is in retrograde. Whatever. But deep down because, y'know, well, because she was a twit who wasn't specific in her request and you aren't a psychic who knows how to translate "cinnamon fudge swirl" into "functional cake output."

 

I don't know if I have ever loved anybody more than I love you.

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OneHotMess Posted 28 Mar 2014 , 4:15am
post #11 of 11

Quote:

Originally Posted by TheNerdyBaker 
 

 

I don't know if I have ever loved anybody more than I love you.

 

D'awwww... Imagine what would happen if I actually knew what I was talking about! Really, though, someone with a shop is much more knowledgeable.

The part where it's, "Interact with someone who only has half a clue what they're talking about, what they want, and how to communicate it to you - and even though that's three halves, it's NOT a whole," is my forte, but that doesn't make it functional for business interactions. :(

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