The last thing I expected when making cinnamon rolls for the first time was that I would succeed in round one.

That never happens.

Making cinnamon rolls requires working with yeast, and that fragile chemistry had been beyond my abilities until just recently.

Basic buns

Cinnamon rolls are considered specialty breads, and that name suggests advanced baking skills. The popularity of businesses that specialize in the sweet rolls — among them, the nationwide Cinnabon franchise — only reinforces the perception that novices should stay out of this elite corner of the kitchen.

To increase the odds that my first experiment would succeed, I searched for an entry-level recipe — one with training wheels.

The only cinnamon-roll recipe I could find in my pared-down cookbook collection called for two types of sugar I had never heard of before: caster sugar and icing sugar.

This was not a time for working with novel ingredients, and that's assuming I could even find them in the backwater town of Monticello, Utah — the outpost of "civilization" closest to my rural home.

Once again, I turned to the Internet, where I was overwhelmed with thousands of recipes, each with a different twist. Some called for pudding, others for lemon glaze or orange zest, cream-cheese icing or maple syrup. And those were only the ones I looked at.

On About.com, I found a recipe that lived up to its name: "simple cinnamon rolls." Most of the ingredients were agreeably familiar: water, salt, milk, butter, egg, cinnamon, brown sugar and flour. It also included yeast, but that was no longer a source of trepidation, though I was puzzled to see that the recipe allowed only 35 minutes for the microscopic fungi to lift the dough.

That mystery was solved when I opened the oven door at the end of the cooking cycle and found that the yeast had continued to rise while cooking. The rolls at the perimeter of the pie pan nearly spilled over the sides in their enthusiastic expansion.

Getting schooled

The ability of yeast to continue rising even as it's subjected to extreme temperatures increased my respect for this tiny organism.

But I don't like surprises when I cook any more than I like it when recipe authors assume that we're all graduates of the Culinary Institute of America.

Instructed to roll up the partially risen dough "like a jelly roll," I was forced to turn back to my Cook's Companion (edited by Carole Clements, subtitled The Ultimate Cooking Course and Kitchen Encyclopedia), which graciously included photographs to illustrate each step of its Cinnamon and Walnut Buns recipe — the one I had rejected as too complicated for its inclusion of unusual sugars.

One photograph showed a rolled-out rectangle of dough topped with sugary filling being rolled tightly along its longest side. I tried the same trick, but my filling was more viscous than the one in the Cook's Companion. The rolling wall of dough pushed much of the filling ahead of it like a tidal wave onto the countertop and out the sides, which — in my panic — I failed to pinch.

I slathered the excess filling atop the buns in hopes it would leach back into the dough as it cooked. Expecting that this mistake would prove disastrous, I was shocked when the rolls turned out to be delicious — even if they were twice as large as when I put them in the oven.

The final challenge was what to do with all the leftover cinnamon rolls. As a person who rarely eats pastries and sweet breads, I didn't like the idea of watching them rot or eating them until I was sick.

I decided to freeze the leftovers, and they continued to sweeten my mornings for weeks afterward.

SIMPLE CINNAMON ROLLS

(Makes 12 rolls)

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 cup warm water

3/4 cup milk

1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg

3 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

For the filling:

1 cup firmly packed brown sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 cup butter, softened

In a large bowl, add yeast, sugar, salt, water and milk. Stir until yeast and sugar are dissolved. Stir in melted butter and egg.

Mix in flour a quarter cup at a time until dough is soft. Turn dough out on board and knead for five minutes, adding more flour by the tablespoonful when needed. Place dough in a greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm place for 15 minutes.

While dough is set aside, mix the cinnamon filling in a medium bowl.

Roll dough into large rectangle and spread with cinnamon filling. Sprinkle with raisins, if desired. Roll up dough like a jelly roll. Pinch seam and ends. Cut off two inches from each end of the roll. Discard the two bits of dough.

Cut roll into 12 buns. Put rolls into greased pan. Cover and let rise for about 20 minutes. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes or until lightly brown. Remove from oven, turn out and serve.

Recipe compliments of About.com.

Sandy Nelson lives in the great expanse of southeast Utah.