In my holiday baking batch from last year (XMAS 15), I included 17-67: Coconut Crescents to offer some variety to the endless types of cookies. 🍪 17-48: Buttery Vanilla Rolls were included in this year’s holiday baking (XMAS 16) for much the same reason, although I think I ended up with a better mix of items this year. 🎅🏼
I liked that these were baked in muffin cups as well–I thought that might make them easier to pack up and distribute/ship as gifts. To make them holiday-ish, I sprinkled them with a bit of red and green decorating sugar while they were cooling. 🎄
I learned a lot about cake yeast during the shopping/planning for this recipe.
- Cake (fresh) yeast is not the same as active dry yeast.
- Cake yeast is found in the refrigerated section of the market, not the baking/dry section.
- Active dry yeast can be substituted for cake yeast if you are like me and did not learn these things until after a frustrating and unsuccessful trip to the market.
Ingredients. There’s not a lot to these–it’s more about process than content.
As per this link from above, it basically works out to about 1 packet of dry yeast to 1 packet of fresh yeast. If you’re working off a big container of yeast like I do, a standard package is equivalent to 2¼ tsp of yeast. 🍞
I foolishly tried to mix this by hand originally (like I do with most bread doughs), but it quickly occurred to me that this was not going to work the same as a bread dough–this was much more similar to a pie or pastry dough, where the butter needs to be cut in quickly and evenly. Before it turned into even more of a greasy mess, I stopped and got out my new food processor.
My (early) Christmas present, getting used a lot for these recipes. I started off first with the regular sharp metal blade, which was not working well–the dough still wasn’t coming together properly. I scooped all the contents back out into the original big mixing bowl, cleaned all the processor parts, switched to the dough blade, and put it all back in. With a bit of added flour and some well-timed pulses, I was able to even it out and save the dough. It probably wasn’t as great as it could have been, but I think it worked out well enough.
I tripled this recipe (hence the way over-filled food processor bowl in the previous picture), and so I ended up with 6 dough balls instead of just the two. I originally missed the part about letting the dough rise (before I cut them up), so I piled all of these into a big bowl and let them rise just like that.
While my dough balls rose, I cleaned the food processor (again) and used it to whip up the vanilla/butter filling for the rolls.
They did get a bit bigger, although it’s tough to tell since the balls are made up of bits I stuck together to roughly get each “ball” to the same size/weight.
After rolling out each “ball”, I experimented with a few different methods of dividing up each rectangle for the triangles needed to make the rolls. The one I liked the best was this one, it gave a lot of long skinny triangles that made nice tucked rolls. The triangles that were too small got combined together into big-enough triangles.
Rolls with a bit of filling in the middle and then tucked/rolled up–I wanted to keep them as closed as possible. As they rose a bit more, they started to pop themselves back apart.
I stuffed some of the trays really full–I figured the paper cups would keep each roll from sticking together.
After baking and a sprinkle of powdered sugar & some red/green sugar crystals. I wrapped up each one and tossed 2-3 in each giftee bag–I didn’t get too many rave reviews on these ones, but they made a nice mild, nut-free option in each assortment.
Grade: B+
🎅🏼 Interested in the full list of Simply Delicious treats we made for 2016’s holiday baking extravaganza? (XMAS 16) 🎄
- 17-47: Italian Fruit Bread
- 17-42: Luscious Lemon Bars
- 17-41: Molasses Oatmeal Bread
- 17-20: Macadamia Chip Cookies
- 17-48: Buttery Vanilla Rolls
- 17-49: Apple Muffins
- 17-25: Almond Rolls
- 17-40: Apple Rolls
How about another year’s Simply Delicious holiday bake-off? XMAS 15
