Dinner Rolls

Ugh guys. I’m having a hard time getting back into cooking and taking pictures! Here’s a post I had prepared for last week. I made these rolls for an Easter gathering.

Dinner rolls are so cute. I can rarely ever get them right but when I do, I am filled with pride. Pathetic, I know.

This recipe is light, buttery, and perfect to serve with a company dinner. Don’t do what I suggest in the video…putting cheese in my 100% whole wheat bread dough and forming it into rolls. They flopped. Terribly. I should have taken a picture. But our friends ate them and claimed them good. They were probably just being polite.

The next day, I made the recipe below. They turned out much better than the other ones. So use this recipe. It’s a good one.

Dinner Rolls

Adapted from my mom’s recipe

2 cups (16 oz) warm water

1 cup (8 oz) scalded milk, cooled to 120 degrees

2/3 cup (scant) (5 oz) cane sugar

2 1/2 T yeast

10 T (5 oz) butter

1 T salt

3 eggs

3 T gluten

2 cups (9 oz) sprouted whole wheat bread flour

8 – 9 cups (40 – 45 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour

Stir together the water, milk, sugar, yeast, and butter. Let sit a few minutes. Add the salt, eggs, gluten, and whole wheat flour. Mix well. Gradually add the all-purpose flour until you have a nice, workable dough. Knead for 10 minutes until nice and smooth. Cover and let rise until doubled in volume, about and hour and half.

When dough is ready, punch it down and divide it into small balls. I weighed mine this time and used 2 oz balls. This recipe made 46 rolls so I put 40 of them in a half sheet pan and 6 in another small pan. They were almost touching (not fully touching like in the video). If your balls are really small, making them touch works but with those whopper ones I made in the video, I shouldn’t have put them so close together. Like I said, I rarely ever get rolls right!

Anyway, roll them up into nice balls and place them on parchment lined or greased pans. Cover and let rise another hour or so, until they are doubled in size. Uncover and bake at 400 for about 20 minutes or until they are nicely browned and make a hollow “thunk” when tapped on the bottom. While still hot, brush the tops of the rolls with butter. Remove from the pans and cool on a wire rack.

Yield: 46 medium-size rolls.

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Vanilla Pudding

Ever wonder why your pudding curdles? Or why there are scrambled eggs in your custard? It’s probably because you didn’t temper your eggs. Here, I’ll show you how.

So there you have it. How to Temper Eggs (and some yummy vanilla pudding).

P.S. My lovely mother just called me and gave me a good critique of my movie. She pointed out that I said something a bit wrong. In regards to boiling the milk/cornstarch mixture…I said it doesn’t have to come to a full boil but it really should. If it doesn’t have big bubbles coming to the surface, you’ll end up with a sort of chalky pudding. So don’t listen to me. Make sure there are big bubbles popping on the surface and you’ll be fine. Sorry ’bout that!

Vanilla Pudding

Adapted from my mom’s recipe

3 cups milk

2 1/2 T agave or 3 T sugar

1/4 c cornstarch

2 eggs

1/4 t salt

3/4 t vanilla

Whisk the eggs and salt together in a medium size bowl. Set aside.

Mix the milk, agave, and cornstarch in a sauce pan. Over medium low heat, bring the mixture to a boil, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pot the whole time with a flat-tipped spoon or spatula. Remove from heat and while quickly whisking the eggs, drizzle in the hot milk. Pour the mixture back into the pot and cook another minute or so over low heat. Don’t boil at this point! Remove from the heat and stir in the vanilla. Pour into a bowl or custard cups and chill. If you don’t want that “skin” to form on the pudding, place a piece of plastic wrap directly on top of the pudding while it’s still hot.

Serves: 7

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Butter Cookies

Brad gave me a little LifeCam for Christmas. I thought it was about time I put it to use. Occasionally a class of preschoolers takes a tour of the dairy and I always make them some little cow cookies for their goody bags. So here you have it: Zoe cutting out cow cookies (I’m a little nervous for you to watch…maybe you shouldn’t hit the play button!).

I think I need to work on my camera presence. And my stuttering and awkward pauses. It took 3 tries to get this little snippet. I’ve got a looong way to go.

Anyway, these cookies. They are delicious. Crisp, buttery little gems. I hope the children enjoy them!

Butter Cookies

Adapted from Alton Brown’s recipe

1 cup (8 oz) unsalted butter, room temp

1 cup (7 oz) sugar

1 egg, room temp

1 t vanilla

2 T milk

2 cups (10 oz) all-purpose flour

1 cup (4 1/4 oz) sprouted whole wheat pastry flour

3/4 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

Cream the butter and sugar until fluffy. Beat in the egg, vanilla, and milk. Stir together the dry ingredients and then add them to the creamed mixture. Mix well and then form the dough into two disks. Refrigerate the disks, covered, for a few hours or until firm.

Remove one ball of dough at a time and roll out on a lightly floured surface until 1/8th inch thick (or a little less). Cut into desired shapes and bake at 375 on parchment lined cookie sheets for 8 to 10 minutes. Remove from sheets and cool on a wire rack. Ice once cooled.

Yield: 4 to 5 dozen cow cookies

Apple Cream Cheese Icing

1 cup powdered sugar

1 1/2 oz cream cheese, room temp

1 T butter, room temp

2 T apple jelly

Beat all ingredients together until smooth. Ice cookies. Leftovers freeze well.

Yield: 3/4 cup icing

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