Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting

Cinnamon Roll Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting - made July 9, 2017 from Tastes Better From Scratch

I’ve had this cake on my pinterest board for awhile and it looked really good so I finally made it. Except mine didn’t turn out looking as well as the original blog I got the recipe from. Yeah, that happens more often than I care to admit.

I also (re)discovered that my swirling skills aren’t very good. I’m too tentative and don’t go bold with swirling because I get too paranoid that I’ll over-swirl and the two batters I’m trying to swirl will end up being too mixed in and incorporated with each other instead of standing out as separate-but-swirled equals. Bah.

Subsequently, this ended up being partial vanilla cake with pockets of melted cinnamon rather than vanilla cake with subtle “swirls” of cinnamon goodness. Trust me, there’s a difference. Still, I liked the cake itself. But I should’ve cut back on the frosting. I tried to get creative with it and add cinnamon to make it a cinnamon cream cheese frosting (cuz you know I don’t like cream cheese). But I cut too large of a hole in my Ziploc bag that I was using to pipe the frosting onto the cake so instead of dainty lines of frosting artistically criss crossing over the cake, I ended up with wide, flat lines like I was about to do a basketweave design. It wasn’t pretty. 

Rather than present it that (really lame) way, I decided to cover my frosting sins by just smoothing all the lines into a thin layer of frosting. Um, bad idea. Turns out I didn’t like the taste of the frosting itself; too tangy and not sweet enough. It might’ve been fine if I really had executed thin lines of it sparingly over the cinnamon vanilla cake so the sweetness of the cake could offset the tanginess of the frosting. But covering the whole thing with a layer of frosting; a no-no. I’d say this cake was okay but definitely not my finest baking hour.  

Cake
1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/4 cup butter, melted

Cinnamon Swirl
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons butter, softened
4 ounces cream cheese
1-2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon, optional

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line an 8 x 8" baking pan with foil and lightly spray with nonstick cooking spray.
2. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, egg and vanilla. Stir in melted butter. Pour mixture into prepared pan and smooth into an even layer.
3. Cinnamon Swirl: cream butter, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon until smooth.
4. Drop spoonfuls of the mixture evenly over the cake batter. Use a knife to swirl through the cake and disperse the mixture throughout the cake batter.
5. Bake 32-37 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. 
6. While cake is baking, make frosting: cream butter, cream cheese, powdered sugar, milk, vanilla and cinnamon together until smooth and of desired consistency. Drizzle over warm cake; serve warm.