The Kitchen Scraps To Start Saving Now For Easy Cinnamon Rolls Later

With the spike in grocery prices, food waste is something many of us are trying to avoid. Though a tighter weekly grocery budget can be stressful, learning new ways to use up odds and ends often leads to surprisingly delicious results, such as turning cauliflower stems into tangy pickles, or making espresso shots in nearly empty jam jars for fruity lattes. In fact, squeezing every last bit of goodness out of an ingredient is so undeniably satisfying that once you get started, you'll start seeing potential in every tidbit in your fridge.

Take bread crusts, for example. Normally just a discarded part of properly prepared bread for tea sandwiches or that PB&J for members of the picky eaters club, these humble little strips of bread are actually perfect for making mini cinnamon rolls. The recipe is so simple your kids can even get in on the action. Rolling the crusts into a spiral and squishing them down into greased muffin tins is the part your little ones may enjoy the most, as it involves "playing" with your food. This shaping helps hold the rolls together — and it's also a lot of fun, even if you're doing it yourself.

Meanwhile, butter, cinnamon, and ordinary white sugar melt together to become a rich, sweet glaze that sinks into the bread crusts, softening the interior of the tiny spiral rolls as they bake, while allowing the outer edges to become delectably crispy. These little sweet bites pair perfectly with coffee or a glass of cold milk.

The only true obstacle between you and your new favorite snack is gathering enough discarded crusts to make a batch. You'll need the crusts from nearly an entire loaf of standard sandwich bread for a full dozen mini cinnamon rolls, which can be a problem if you're not making sandwiches in bulk. However, you can simply earmark an airtight storage container for discarded crusts and keep it in your fridge until you have enough. Though the crusts may go stale while waiting to be rolled, they'll revive when soaked in sugary, cinnamon-sweetened butter and baked to golden perfection.

When discussing cinnamon rolls, there's some debate about frosting versus icing (they're not the same thing), and whether either is truly necessary. While how you top your cinnamon rolls is up to you and your preferences, this may also be the perfect way to use up that last bit of powdered sugar you were thinking of tossing, or an opportunity to whip up some three-ingredient, protein-packed frosting with those last few spoonfuls of cottage cheese.

Additionally, if you're out of cinnamon, you can simply use a teaspoon of vanilla, or replace it with pumpkin pie spice mix. It's also perfectly okay to mix and match crusts from different kinds of bread, such as a blend of rye and pumpernickel for added depth of flavor. Or, ditch the sweetness entirely and top them with garlic-infused butter and a little cheese for homemade kitchen scrap garlic knots.