Latest / The Monégasque Table / Edible Glitter on Cinnamon Roll Icing: The Christmas Morning Countdown
Transcript
- Dana: 7:00 in the morning. That's when my kids are standing at the top of the stairs on Christmas, and they are not waiting for dough to rise. So when somebody tells me to make sparkly cinnamon rolls for Christmas breakfast, my first question is: when exactly am I supposed to do all that? Margaux: Welcome to The Monégasque Table. Today's question is the Christmas breakfast question: how do you put edible glitter on cinnamon roll icing, and how do you time it so it actually happens on Christmas morning? Dana: And not at 11, after everybody's eaten cereal. Margaux: Here's the answer up front. The glitter goes on the icing while the icing is still wet, and the icing goes on the rolls while the rolls are still warm. So the glitter is the very last thing you do, about 30 seconds before the pan hits the table. The recipe I read is a one-rise cinnamon roll from a baking site, and it has a make-ahead trick built in. You make the dough the night before, all the way through rolling and cutting, cover the pan, and put it in the fridge overnight. Christmas morning, the pan comes out, rises in a warm spot for about 1 hour, bakes at 375 degrees for 24 to 27 minutes, gets its cream cheese icing spread on warm, and then the glitter. The recipe says spread the icing over the warm rolls and serve immediately. Glitter is the step between those two words. Dana: So my job on Christmas morning is: take a pan out of the fridge, turn the oven on, and make icing. Margaux: That's most of it. We'll build the whole countdown, minute by minute, in a bit. Dana: Sparkle Lab first, because I want to understand the why. Why does it have to be the warm icing? I usually wait for things to cool before I decorate them. That's like, rule one of cakes. Margaux: It is rule one of cakes, and cinnamon rolls break it on purpose. Here's the logic. Decorating guides say glitter holds best to icing that's still wet and glossy, and a surface that has already set and dried takes far less. Most icings set as they cool and dry. So the window for glitter is the window while the icing is still wet. On a cake, you create that window by applying glitter right after you frost. On cinnamon rolls, the warm roll keeps the icing soft for you. The recipe actually describes it: both of its icings seep right into every gooey swirl. That's an icing that is wet, glossy and moving. That's exactly the surface glitter grabs. Dana: And if I wait 20 minutes, because someone's opening a present? Margaux: Then the icing has had 20 minutes to settle and start to set on top, and you're working with less grab. Still worth doing. Just less of it holds where you put it. The best version is: icing on, glitter on, pan to the table. Dana: What's in this icing? Because I usually just use whatever's in the can. Margaux: The recipe's cream cheese icing is 4 ounces of cream cheese, 2 tablespoons of butter, 2/3 cup of confectioners' sugar and 1 teaspoon of vanilla. It takes a couple of minutes with a mixer. It also offers a simpler vanilla icing, just confectioners' sugar, vanilla and a little milk. Both are pale, and pale matters, because you're putting a sparkle on a white canvas. Dana: Dust or flakes? Margaux: This is where we disagree. I'd use flake. Glitter flake runs 50 to 500 microns. You sprinkle it on wet icing and every flake catches the light separately, like frost on a window. Luster dust is 5 to 25 microns, ultra-fine. On a firm buttercream, you'd brush it on for a smooth metallic sheen. But you can't brush warm icing that's sliding into the swirls. You'd smear it. Dana: And I'd use dust. Here's why. I'm not brushing it. I'm putting a pinch in a little tea strainer and tapping it over the pan. A fine gold haze on white icing, on Christmas morning, looks like the rolls are glowing. Flakes look like a party. Dust looks like Christmas. Margaux: That's a real argument, and it's a taste call, not a rule. The strainer is a good tool for it, too. A fine sieve gives even coverage. I'll stay on flake for the sparkle, and you'll stay on dust for the glow, and the listener can do one pan each way on a practice weekend. Dana: A practice weekend. You're already adding steps. Margaux: One step. We'll get there. Dana: Okay. Let me tell you what Christmas morning actually looks like at my house, because I think it matters for this. Last year I tried to do a fancy breakfast. Homemade everything. I had the dough rising on the counter at 6, and I thought I was so clever. And then the kids were up at 6:30, not 7, and the dough was in the way of the coffee, and I was rolling out cinnamon sugar while my youngest was asking if Santa ate the cookies. The rolls came out at 9:15. Everyone had eaten a banana and two candy canes by then. The rolls were great. Nobody was hungry. Margaux: That's the real buyer for this episode. Not the pastry chef. The person whose kitchen is also the present-opening room and the coffee station and the place where the dog is trying to eat wrapping paper. Dana: And the glitter part of that is: I bought sparkly stuff for the rolls. And I forgot it. It was in the pantry. I saw it on December 27th. Margaux: Which is the most common thing that happens to decorating supplies, honestly. An analysis of about 2,400 category reviews found holidays are the top occasion people mention, the kitchen is the top place, and "daughter" is the person reviewers mention most. People buy shimmer for a moment with their kids. The moment is the whole point. So the plan has to make the moment happen, not just the rolls. Dana: So build me the plan. The real one. Margaux: Here's the countdown. I'll start a week out. Margaux: 1 week before Christmas. Buy your glitter if you haven't, and do one thing with the jar: read the ingredient list. The FDA's advisory to bakers says companies that make edible glitters are required by law to list ingredients on the label. A list is your first screening check. And put the jar somewhere you'll see it. Not the back of the pantry. With the cinnamon. Dana: With the cinnamon. That would have saved me last year. Margaux: The weekend before, if you can, the practice pan. You make the recipe once, start to finish, on a normal Saturday. You learn your oven, you see the icing go on warm, you try the glitter, flake or dust, and you know what 1 hour of rising looks like in your kitchen. It also tells you something important: whether your kids like the rolls. Better to learn that on a Saturday. Dana: And if I don't have a practice weekend? Margaux: Then skip it, and follow the recipe closely on the day. It's a forgiving recipe. One rise, 60 to 90 minutes normally, and the make-ahead path is written right into it. Margaux: Christmas Eve, evening. This is the big one. You make the dough, let it come together, roll it out, fill it, roll it up, cut 10 to 12 rolls, and put them in a 9- or 10-inch pan. Then the recipe says: cover with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight. That's it. You've done 90% of the work while the kids are watching a movie. Dana: And the icing? Can I make that Christmas Eve too? Margaux: I'd make it fresh in the morning. The recipe says it takes just a couple of minutes, and you've got 24 to 27 minutes of baking to fill. The glitter, though, stays in the jar. Glitter is never a night-before step on this recipe. Dana: Christmas morning. Margaux: Christmas morning. As soon as you're up, the pan comes out of the fridge and goes somewhere warm to rise, about 1 hour, the recipe says. That's your present-opening hour. Near the end of that hour, the oven goes on to 375 degrees. Then 24 to 27 minutes of baking, until lightly browned. While they bake, you mix the icing. Rolls out. Icing on, while they're warm. Glitter on, while the icing is wet. Table. Dana: So if the kids are up at 6:30, rolls out of the fridge at 6:30, rising until 7:30, in the oven by about 7:30, out a little before 8. Icing, glitter, and we're eating by 8. Margaux: Eating by 8, with an hour of presents in the middle and no dough on the counter during it. Dana: That's actually a plan. I'm a little emotional about it. Dana: My round. You keep saying icing on, glitter on. But I know myself. If I put the icing on and then go find the glitter, the glitter step is when someone needs a battery for a toy. So I'm going to say: put the glitter in the bowl. Mix it right into the icing the night before. Done. One step instead of two. Margaux: I see why you want that. But I'd push back. A decorating guide on luster dust says mixing it into buttercream just wastes it, because it gets lost in the cream. It's meant to be a coating. Icing is the same idea. Mixed in, most of the shimmer is inside the icing, under the surface, where nobody sees it. Dana: Fine, but then my real point stands. The glitter step has to be fast, or it won't happen. So here's my fix. Before bed on Christmas Eve, I measure the glitter. I put a little pinch in a tiny bowl, or in the tea strainer, and I set it on the counter next to the icing spatula. On Christmas morning, the glitter is already out and already measured. Spatula down, strainer up. 10 seconds. Margaux: That's the round you win. It solves the real failure, which isn't technique, it's forgetting. Your sparkle from last year didn't fail on the rolls. It failed in the pantry. Measured the night before, sitting next to the spatula, it's 10 seconds and it happens every time. Glitter stays on top, not in the bowl, and it's ready before anyone wakes up. Dana: Strainer next to the spatula. Write that one down too. Margaux: Written down twice. Dana: Now the questions I'd actually get from the other moms at school. First one, and it's the big one. Is this stuff actually safe to put on my kids' breakfast? Margaux: You're right to ask, and the answer starts with one word on the jar: edible. The FDA advises bakers to avoid glitter and dust products on food unless they're specifically manufactured to be edible. And it gives a test: if a label says only "non-toxic" or "for decorative purposes only" and has no ingredient list, it should not be used directly on food. Dana: Why does that matter so much? Non-toxic sounds safe. Margaux: Because non-toxic is not edible, and there's a real case that shows the difference. A CDC report described an October 2018 birthday party in Rhode Island where six children, aged 1 to 11, got sick after eating cake from a local bakery. The dust on that cake was labeled "nonedible," "nontoxic" and "for decoration only." Every one of those words was on the label, and it still was not food. So what you look for is the word edible and an ingredient list. And for frosting specifically, the federal listing for mica-based pearlescent pigment, 21 CFR 73.350, names frostings among its food categories, at up to 1.25% by weight of the food. Dana: 1.25% of the icing. Margaux: By weight of the food. That's the rule as it's written, and it's the category your icing sits in. Dana: Second question. Will it taste weird? My kids will notice if it tastes weird. My kids notice if I switch the brand of ketchup. Margaux: It won't. This kind of mineral shimmer pigment is an odorless, flavorless powder, and it's heat-stable, so it won't change the taste of the icing or the roll. And buyers say the same thing in their own words: that same review analysis has people describing it as no taste or smell, and fun without changing the taste. Dana: Third question, and it's the one I'd ask. Isn't this one more thing on the busiest morning of the year? Margaux: It's one more thing that takes 10 seconds, if you do Dana's strainer. The heavy work moves to Christmas Eve, the morning is a pan, an oven, a spatula and a strainer. If even that's too much, the recipe offers a bigger make-ahead: it freezes for up to 3 months. You can freeze the rolls after shaping, before they rise, then thaw them in the fridge overnight and let them rise 1.5 to 2 hours at room temperature before baking. That's a December weekend doing Christmas Eve's work. Dana: What about leftovers? There will be leftovers. There are always 3 left. Margaux: The recipe says cover leftover rolls tightly and keep them at room temperature for a day, or in the fridge for up to 5 days. I'd treat the glitter as a serve-it-now finish, though. It looks its best on fresh, glossy icing. And a shimmer-storage guide points out that fridges bring condensation when things come out, and moisture is the enemy of a dry sparkle. So day-two rolls might look a bit softer. They'll taste the same. Dana: How much glitter? I always use too much. Margaux: There's no printed serving for a pan of rolls, so do it by eye, and do it once on your practice pan. Start with a small pinch across the whole pan, look at it, add more only where it looks thin. The common thing buyers say is that a little goes a long way. And the 7 gram jar at $9.99 is going to last you a lot of Christmases at a pinch a pan. Dana: And here's a number fight. You said start small. I say, it's Christmas. Go bigger. Nobody has ever complained that the Christmas rolls were too sparkly. Margaux: I'd still start small, because you can add and you can't take away. Wet icing holds what you put on it. If it's too heavy, you can't brush it off without smearing the icing. A small pinch first, look, then more. Dana: Fine. Small pinch, then Christmas. Margaux: Small pinch, then Christmas. That's fair. Dana: Who should skip it? Margaux: 3 skips. If you're icing the rolls the night before so they're fully ready to serve cold, skip the glitter on this recipe. It's a warm-icing, serve-now finish, and the recipe itself says serve immediately. If your family's tradition is the gooey roll with no frills, keep the tradition, that's the point of a tradition. And if you're taking the pan to someone else's house with a long drive, glitter it on arrival, not before you leave, or skip it. A covered pan pressing plastic wrap onto wet icing isn't a sparkle anymore. Dana: Dana's Scorecard. I came in thinking sparkly Christmas rolls were a 9:15 a.m. disaster waiting to happen again. Where I landed. One: Christmas Eve, dough all the way to the pan, covered, in the fridge. Two: Christmas morning, out of the fridge, about 1 hour rise during presents, 375 degrees for 24 to 27 minutes. Three: icing on warm, glitter on wet, then the table. Four, my round: measure the glitter the night before and put it in a strainer next to the spatula, so it takes 10 seconds and can't be forgotten in the pantry. Five: edible on the label, an ingredient list on the jar, never just non-toxic. And six: a small pinch, then more. My caveat: we never settled flake versus dust, and I'm doing dust. Margaux: Gold dust on white icing on Christmas morning is a hard thing to argue with. The footnote: the MONÉGASQUE Gold 7 gram luster dust is on Amazon at $9.99, and a pinch per pan is a lot of Christmas mornings. Dana: Next time, a drink for the grown-ups after the kids are in bed. The espresso martini. It's dark, so where does the shimmer even go? Margaux: On the foam, and the number that matters is how hard you shake. And coming up after that, a glaze that runs down the side of a bundt cake, and when the glitter has to land on it. One note before we go — this show is produced by the team at Monégasque, with AI-crafted hosts. See you at the table.