Whole Wheat Chocolate Chip Cinnamon Rolls

Some good friends of ours used to make these biscuit chocolate chip cinnamon rolls for our family and deliver them warm to our door.  Talk about irresistible!  When we moved away, I knew I wanted to get the recipe, but I wanted to try making these processed free.  What I found was that my kids loved them just as much as ever - success!  Because it's a biscuit dough, these are super simple, don't require a rise time, and there is no glaze or frosting needed.    

Dough:
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour
3 Tbsp. sucanat or coconut palm sugar
4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup shortening (non-hydrogenated)
3/4 cup milk

Filling:
3-4 Tbsp. melted butter
sucanat
cinnamon
chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a medium sized bowl.  Add the shortening and use a pastry cutter to combine them until it looks like crumbs.  Add the milk and stir into the dough.  Add a little flour to knead it into a ball.  Sprinkle flour on a flat surface and roll it into a flat rectangle.  Cover the flattened dough with melted butter and sprinkle the dough with the desired amount of sucanat, cinnamon, and chocolate chips.

Roll into a log and cut into 12 pieces - about 1 inch thick.  place on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 12 minutes. 

I use dental floss to cut them by sliding it under the log, then pulling the two sides to meet and make a nice cut without squishing the dough.  I also cut it in half first, then those two pieces in half and each of those into three to make the pieces pretty even. 

I know I'm a bit vague about the amounts for the filling, but you can really just eye ball what will cover the dough and how much or little you like of each component - ex. more cinnamon, less chocolate chips.  These are fast and very forgiving if you are allowing your kids to help in the whole process as well.  Have fun with it!