Hope you all had a merry Christmas! I did; got a bunch of presents from my family that were marvelous and then I bought a bunch of presents for myself (oops) including shoes, fancy sprinkles (more on that soon), and star-shaped mini cake molds! 

But when I wasn't thinking about myself, I tried to keep my loved ones' bellies happy, one of these endeavors being these swanky cinnamon buns. Dan had been mumbling about wanting to get some cinnamon buns for weeks, so I took it upon myself to make some, though I have nothing against them babies from Cinnabon, mk? 

Rather than typical, meh, cinnamon buns, I dug into my pantry to try and spice things up a little bit. I pulled out a can of leftover jellied cranberry sauce that someone brought over as a half-joke at Thanksgiving, some chopped pecans, and some whole wheat flour that I've been avoiding since March.

The combo turned out a perfecto Christmas morning treat. We gobbled these buns up while ripping apart packages and trying on new clothes/waving around pretty new green spatulas. 

Oh, and if blogging goes slowly over the next few weeks, it's because I also bought myself the Alexander Hamilton biography and I cannot put this 800-pager down. 

Anyway, this recipe was inspired partly by this one from Epicurious.