When Sam Baker had the chance to help an 80-year-old man celebrate his birthday in a gigantic way, he couldn't resist.
He set to work, handmaking his cinnamon roll recipe. This time, he didn't divide the from-scratch batch into smaller, delightful cinnamon rolls. Instead, he took the large lump of dough and created a colossal birthday-sized cinnamon roll for John White.
Baker and his wife Gayla have fulfilled this type of wish before. Last year, the two concocted the idea for a girl with whom they attend church. The Bakers, who own The Jane Store, thought it would be neat to create a larger-than-life cinnamon roll for her birthday.
Fast-forward to this year, when White's wife remembered the photo she saw of that enormous cinnamon roll. She contacted the Bakers to see if they could create one for her husband.
Gayla says Sam, who turns out beautiful normal-sized cinnamon rolls, continues to tap into his own locally famous recipe.
When he first started making cinnamon rolls, he did a lot of research, trying out several, but none fit his fancy. When he found a bread recipe in a church cookbook, he tried it out and modified it.
"He made it his own," Gayla said.
Sam estimates making the massive birthday cinnamon roll takes about the same time as making up a batch of regular-sized cinnamon rolls. He makes the dough, lets it rise, rolls out the dough to form a crazy-sized roll, then bakes it on a big cookie sheet before icing it.
For the Bakers, it was a lot of fun helping a customer celebrate in an epic way. When the Whites came in to pick up the cinnamon roll before going to his Feb. 21 birthday party, the Bakers were able to capture the birthday boy with his sweet-sized surprise.
"He had a big grin on his face," Sam said, "and he said it was the happiest birthday he had ever had."
So is Sam prepared, if requests launch him into a big cinnamon-roll baking frenzy?
Gayla laughed. "I'm sure he'll probably make them," she said.
General News on 03/05/2020