Save Your Undesired Bread Crust And Make This Easy Dessert

After putting so much work into dinner, sometimes you just want an easy dessert that doesn't require more ingredients and a ton of time. Luckily, if you have some bread crusts lying around, you can easily make them into delicious post-dinner cinnamon rolls.

The key here is to use bread with a very soft crust. While pizza crusts are great for making breadcrumbs, you need something that's easily malleable without breaking and doesn't have too many additional flavors. Simply roll your crusts into pinwheels, secure them with a toothpick, then melt a bit of water, sugar, and butter together in a pan. The water and sugar combine into a simple syrup, and the butter toasts the bread and adds a bit of savoriness. Fry each side of your pinwheels until golden brown, remove the toothpick, sprinkle with cinnamon, and you're done!

You can also brush the frying mixture over the pinwheels and easily cook cinnamon rolls in the air fryer for a couple minutes on each side at 320 degrees Fahrenheit. In a pan or air fryer, you want to use just enough syrup and butter to give your rolls good flavor and texture, but not so much that they become soggy. But provided you balance the process just right, you'll have an incredible little cake that's ready for toppings, dipping sauces, or a sprinkling of extra seasonings.

Even without any dressing up, bread crust cinnamon rolls are sweet, satisfying, and incredibly easy to make. Still, their ease of preparation leaves room for some improvement, and some new tastes and textures can go a long way towards making people think you worked in the kitchen for hours to produce such an amazing treat.

Cinnamon rolls and icing go together like peas and carrots, but if you don't have any on hand, there's another creamy ingredient that gives extra sweetness: pudding. This is great if you've added additional spices to your rolls, like nutmeg or cloves, because pudding comes in a huge variety of flavors, letting you mix and match tastes to your palate. Plus, boxed pudding benefits from adding butter (especially when using water in the pan, rather than milk); if you choose to use salted butter, it brings out the sweetness in the dessert without adding more sugar.

If you want a deeper, homier flavor, try using brown or turbinado sugar when frying your cinnamon rolls. Both have more molasses than white sugar, contributing a greater depth of flavor. For something just a little bit boozy, you can also substitute the water with liquor. Try using something a bit dark, as these liquors typically pair better with cinnamon and sugar. Bourbon and spiced rum are great choices because of their natural sweetness, but rye whiskey, dry brandies, and cognacs work well, too.