I think most people, having spent the week end with their fellow baking blogger and Internet life partner, would start off their post with a fabulous tale of co-baking and recipe swapping. Not I!

Oh, The Urban Housewife and I had fun alright – discussing blogs we love and hate, shopping at Renegade in the rain and making ourselves sick on too many things at Sweet Cakes, Blind Faith Cafe and more…

But our attempt to team up on some delicious vegan cinnamon rolls failed miserably not once, but twice. The end result of two days of planning, meticulously hand-written directions from Melisser, a late-night search for ground flax seeds, 9 cups of flour and more Teno-shooing than has ever occurred in my kitchen before was 24 of the weirdest, doughiest cinnamon rolls this fair city has ever seen. Sure, they tasted alright, we loaded them up with expensive Chinese cinnamon and vegan chocolate chips. But they were unleaven, virtually raw – and over all, a little creepy.

Melisser tends to keep her blog positive – reviews of good cake, pictures of beautiful things, notices to donate to worthy causes and I… well, I write about recipes that made me cry and 80’s wrestling. So it should surprise no one when Melisser references our failed experiment but doesn’t elaborate on its horrifying results and I dwell on every last, chewy detail.

So, here’s our bad recipe, which I post in hopes that one of you will see the problem right away, fix it and thus, create the most delicious vegan cinnamon rolls ever conceived.

To start the mess you will need:

• 1 pkg dry yeast
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 cup soymilk, warmed up
• 2 Tbs ground flax + 6 Tbs hot water
• 1/3 cup Earth Balanace, melted
• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp salt

And for the filling, the only part that tastes good, you’ll need:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 Tbs cinnamon
• 1/3 cup Earth Balance, melted

Then you:

Get everyone’s hopes up about cinnamon rolls, especially your own. Make sure you start this when you’re already kind of hungry because it takes forever. Pre-heat the oven to 400 degrees. In a large mixing bowl, mix the yeast, warm soymilk and sugar. Let stand until foamy. Or whisk it like we did, who cares?

Mix the flax and water to make “flax eggs”, add this to the melted Earth Balance, flour and salt and knead 5-10 minutes. It shouldn’t be sticky, but it will be.

Let the dough double in size. Or, wait an hour and notice that the dough hasn’t risen at all and start all over with a new batch like we did.

Turn the dough out onto a floured surface and allow to rest 10 minutes. Decide that you want to see what happens when you bake the other dough since neither one has risen, and end up with twice as many gross cinnamon rolls.

In a small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon and melted Earth Balance. Remark that this is entirely too much filling because it is.

Roll dough to 16×21″, go get Tony and ask him if that looks about right. When he says “yeah,” brush it with Earth Balance and sprinkle with the filling, taking care to add more where the middle will be (the edge closest to you) even though you won’t want to eat enough to actually get to the middle.

Roll tightly and cut into 12 even rolls. Go back and forth with your baking partner about which way to roll it, then decide on “the long way.” Cut the ends off because they’re ugly and then bake them anyway in case the rolls are delicious, which they will not be.

Place rolls on a cookie sheet and let rise 30 more minutes because these things haven’t already taken you two hours to make. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown or just take them out after 20 minutes and eat them even though they’re totally not cooked at all.

Be sure to waste your time making frosting. Go to Pasta Fresh and then to the mall, come home three hours later and throw all the cinnamon rolls away.

The end.

Ah well, can’t win ’em all. I’m interested to see Melisser’s impression of vegan Chicago. The Midwest isn’t exactly known for it’s vegan cuisine. We’re not exactly known for much outside of Ditka and Al Capone and that’s the way we like it. But we do make occasional lame attempts at veganism, like these Vegan Chai-cago Cupcakes I made to impress Melisser. I think she was pretty blown away, at least that’s the way her text message came across. I am amazing.

One last note on Melisser- sure she’s a reknown vegan baker, an internationally-read blogger and the only person to ever look good in skinny jeans- but did you also know that she’s a champion sleeper? I warned her that Teno would be up and ready to party at 7am every morning- and he was- but that bitch just slept on through it! Man, San Fransisco must be the noisiest place on Earth. Either that or Melisser is as good at ignoring as she is at stealth photos of vegan baked goods.

Ah well, it was a pleasure to share my week end with my favorite blogger and it was even more of a pleasure to have people at Renegeade act like we were Paris and Nicole or some shit.