Tremendous Cinnamon Roll Cake

Folks. FOLKS. Stop what you're doing. Put the phone down. Cinnamon roll cake. TREMENDOUS cinnamon roll cake. The greatest hybrid baked good in the history of hybrid baked goods — and there have been a LOT of hybrid baked goods, the cronut, the cruffin, the whatever-the-kids-are-launching-this-month — and none of them, NONE, touch this cake. Hands down. Game over.

Here is the genius. And it is genius, I'll say it, I figured it out, the world owes me a small thank-you note — you take everything joyful about a cinnamon roll: the soft cake, the cinnamon-sugar swirl, the white glaze that drips down the sides — and you SKIP the part where you have to roll yeast dough at 5am like a medieval peasant. You skip the rising. You skip the kneading. You skip the WAITING. The traditional cinnamon roll asks you for three hours of your life before breakfast. THREE HOURS. For breakfast. Who has three hours in the morning. Nobody. A disgrace.

This cake — and I have fed it to important people, important people whose names I will absolutely not drop because I am classy that way — this cake delivers the EXACT same flavor in forty-five minutes. Forty-five! You whisk a batter, you swirl in cinnamon-sugar-butter, you bake it, you glaze it, you eat it, you weep gently into a paper napkin. In that order. The weeping is mandatory. Food chemists agree on this. Statisticians have run the numbers. Weeping at breakfast is a documented SIGN OF QUALITY. Believe me.

Cut it into twelve squares and serve it WARM. Warm. Cold cinnamon roll cake is a sad rectangle. Warm cinnamon roll cake is a hug from somebody who actually loves you. People will fight over the corner pieces — that's where the cinnamon swirl pools, that's where the real magic happens — and you will witness, with your own eyes, your loved ones become enemies over a baked good, and you'll know, deep in your chest, that you caused this. You did this. You'll be proud. And there you have it.