Raspberry Cinnamon Rolls

I thought for a long time about the title of this post.  It’s my Valentine’s Day recipe and I thought it should be something special, but in the end, I decided Raspberry Cinnamon Rolls sound so good, there’s no need for anything else. Not convinced?  What if I told you they’re topped with raspberry, cream cheese frosting?  Ah, now I’ve got your attention. 

Here’s what you’ll need: 

• ¾ cup milk
• ¾ cup hot water
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• 3 ½ cups flour
• 1 pkg yeast (2 ¼ teaspoons)
• 2 Tablespoons sugar
• ½ teaspoon salt 

Mix together the hot water, milk, and butter.  You want to end up with something warm enough to melt the butter, but not hot.  Think warm bath temperature.  If it’s not warm enough, just pop it into the microwave for a few seconds.  Set that aside.

In a mixing bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast.  Stir them to evenly distribute everything.

Pour in the warm milk mixture. 

Stir until it looks something like this, and then put it on the mixer with the dough hook. 

Knead for 5 – 7 minutes, until the dough is nice and smooth. The dough will be quite soft, and slightly tacky.  Form it into something resembling a ball and place it into a buttered bowl.  Put it top side down, then turn it and flip it over so that the whole surface gets lightly buttered from the bowl. 

Cover with a damp towel and allow it to rise.  You want it to double in size, which will probably take about an hour.

Sprinkle some flour over your work area. 

Dump out the dough and deflate it with your fingers or knuckles. 

It needs a few minutes to rest before you start rolling, so while it’s doing that, measure ½ cup sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon into a container with a lid.  Mason jars are perfect if you have one. 

Lightly flour the top of your dough, and then roll it to about ½ inch thickness.  You should have a rectangle that’s something like 18 x 14 inches.

You need about 5 Tablespoons of butter.  Make sure it’s nice and soft.  You can probably accomplish that just by stirring it, but I actually had to throw mine into the microwave for 5 seconds.  You don’t want it to be melted, though.

Spread a thin layer over the dough, leaving about an inch along one of the long sides bare. 

Sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar, again avoiding that last inch of dough. 

It won’t be perfect, but try to make it mostly even. 

Now for the raspberries.  Mine were huge, so I actually broke each one in half. 

Place them on top, leaving a little space between them. 

Hubby wasn’t sure about the raspberries, so I left some of mine as regular cinnamon rolls.  If you have picky eaters in your house, it’s an easy thing to do.  Now for the rolling.  Starting with the long edge nearest your (the edge without anything on it should be furthest from you) fold the dough over the first row of raspberries. 

Continue to roll the dough until you have an 18 inch log.  When you reach the bare edge, wet a paper towel and wipe it along dough. 

Pinch that together, sealing it to the side of the dough log. 

Beautiful.

Cut the log into one inch slices. 

Place them into a liberally buttered pan and press down gently on the top of each one.  (as you can see, there are only 12 here, I put the other 6 in another pan)

Cover them again with a damp towel.  You want them to become nice and puffy and begin to press up against one another.  That will probably take about 45 minutes.  Somehow, I didn’t get a picture of that.  I can’t even blame it on Elise, who was over visiting with me, because she reminded me repeatedly throughout the day to take pictures.  What can I say?  I’m scatter brained.  Anyway, preheat the oven to 350°, then bake them for 30 – 35 minutes.  They should be nice and golden on top. 

Turn them out onto a cooling rack so the melted sugary goodness on the bottom doesn’t glue them to the pan. 

Now for the delectable raspberry, cream cheese frosting. 

Here’s what you’ll need: 

• 1 ½ cups raspberries
• 8 ounces cream cheese
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• ⅛ teaspoon salt
• 2 ½ - 3 cups powdered sugar 

Pour some raspberries into a microwave safe bowl.  I poured in a whole bag, but it was more than I needed in the end, so I’d say about 1 ½ cups of berries should be plenty.  You can use either fresh or frozen for this. 

Cover with plastic wrap and then poke a couple of holes in the top. 

Microwave until the berries are nice and hot.  Mine took something like 90 seconds, but just watch them.

When they’re nice and soft and juicy, pour them into a mesh strainer set atop a saucepan or some other vessel.  Using a spoon or silicone spatula, stir and press them, forcing the juice through the strainer.

Continue working with it until the raspberries become quite thick and most of the juice is in the pan below.  Discard what’s left in the strainer. 

Place the raspberry sauce (the technical name is a coulis [pronounced koo-lee], if you’re interested) in a pan over medium-low heat.  Stirring constantly, bring it to a simmer.  If you start to get foam on top, throw in a small piece of butter.

Continue to simmer and stir until it has reduced by about half and has a syrupy consistency. 

A few seeds managed to sneak through the first strainer, so I poured it through an even finer mesh at this point. 

See, nice and smooth.  Set it aside to cool. 

Put the cream cheese and butter into a mixing bowl.  Make sure they’re room temperature. 

Beat them until they’re nice and soft and well combined, then add the vanilla and salt. 

Mix, then scrape everything down, and mix again.  Sift in the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. 

Frequently scrape down the sides of the bowl, and continue until you’ve added 2 ½ cups of powdered sugar.  Add 2 Tablespoons of the reduced raspberry stuff.  Make sure it’s no longer warm. 

When that is incorporated, taste the frosting and check its consistency.  Mine needed an additional ½ cup of powdered sugar.  It doesn’t need to be stiff like a buttercream for cake, but you don’t want it too runny either.  Look at that gorgeous color!   

Turn the cinnamon rolls back into pan they were baked in and cut them apart. 

Now slather on lot of raspberry, cream cheese goodness.  Yeah, I’ll never understand people who drizzle a tiny bit of icing on a cinnamon roll.  They’re meant to be gooey and sticky and messy. 

There you have it.  You will be blown away by how amazing these are.  Once again, homemade beats any box of chocolates or store bought treat. 

What do you do for Valentine’s Day?

Sweet Potato Crisp

One last Thanksgiving side before the big day next week.  By now you probably have everything all planned out.  You might have even done your grocery shopping already.  If your Thanksgiving spread is going to include something that looks like this…

You might want to call an audible.  You know, I grew up eating ‘yams’ just like that, and quite honestly, loved them.  Of course, I loved happy meals too, and I wouldn’t touch one of those with a ten foot pole these days.  Some traditions really are just for children.  And while we’re on the subject of traditions and ‘yams’, let me set the record straight, once and for all.  This is a yam. 

The things you buy in the can or in the produce department are not yams.  Not the orange ones, and not the white ones.  They are all sweet potatoes.  Yam is a misnomer that just happened to catch on in America.  See if you can convince at least one person this holiday season to stop calling them yams.  It will make me feel just a little bit better.  Ok, so enough about my sweet potato pet peeve, let’s get this show on the road. 

Here’s what you’ll need:

For the sweet potatoes:

4 medium sized sweet potatoes
1 cup half and half
2 eggs
¼ cup sugar
Pinch of salt

For the topping:

½ cup butter, softened
⅔ cups oats
⅔ cups whole wheat flour
⅓ cup brown sugar
⅓ cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon cinnamon
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon baking powder

Preheat your oven to 375°.  Wash your sweet potatoes very well and dry them.  I’ll be honest, the white sweet potatoes are better than the orange ones, but my store didn’t have any.  I know ‘better’ is in the taste buds of the feaster, as it were, but that is not the case this time.  White sweet potatoes are better.  Trust me.  Regardless of that, the orange ones are still very tasty and will work if your store has as limited selection as mine did.  Ok, back to cooking.  Place the sweet potatoes onto a foil lined sheet pan.  (This is a small sheet pan, not giant sweet potatoes.)

Pop them into the oven and set the timer for 60 minutes.  With sweet potatoes, you can really smell when they’re done, because they begin to ooze and the liquid caramelizes.  This is why I line the pan with foil.

To be sure, you can check for doneness by inserting a fork. 

If, once through the skin, it goes in and out easily, it’s done.  Mine took 90 minutes, so don’t be surprised if they’re not ready yet.  Another method for checking is just to squeeze them.  They should give easily under your fingers.

Make sure you use a hot pad, though.  They’re really hot.  Once they’ve finished cooking give them a while to cool.  They can happily sit on top of the stove for a few hours, but you can start peeling them whenever they’re cool enough to handle.  The skin will come off fairly easily with a knife. 

When the peel is removed, just cut them into large chunks.  You can do it straight into the mixing bowl you’re going to use, but I decided this was a good stopping point, so I just covered this bowl and put them in the fridge overnight. 

Then, I shared a few bites with Otto because he’d been smelling them for hours, and sweet potatoes are his most favoritest snack.

When you’re ready, throw the sweet potato chunks into your mixing bowl along with 2 eggs, 1 cup of half and half, ¼ cup of sugar, and a pinch of salt. 

Now, I really enjoy the flavor of sweet potatoes (especially the white ones) just the way they are, so I don’t want to do much to them.  If you want them sweeter, add more sugar.  Now just turn on the mixer.  You could also do this with just a potato masher, but I prefer my mixer to do the labor work in my kitchen.  The mixture won’t be completely smooth, but that’s fine.

Pour the mixture into a buttered 8x8 pan and wash your bowl and beater so you can make the topping.  It really couldn’t be simpler.  Throw that whole list of ingredients into your mixing bowl. 

Yes, I know I didn’t sift anything, I didn’t incorporate the baking soda with the flour, all the ingredients are in their own little piles, and I just threw the stick of butter in whole.  Trust me, the mixer will take care of everything.  Just turn it on, starting on low and slowly increase the speed to medium.  Allow it to run for a minute or so, until the mixture is looks moist and crumbly. 

You can also accomplish this with a pastry blender, or even a fork, but well… see above.  Now pour the topping over the sweet potatoes. 

I know, you’re thinking right about now that this is way too much topping.  Personally, I don’t think too much topping is possible when it comes to crisp.  Just pile it on and spread it around.  I promise no one will complain. 

Just in case, you’ll probably want to put the pan on a sheet pan, then slide it into a preheated (oops, forgot to mention that part) 375° oven (Well, 1 for 2 isn't bad, right?).  Bake it for 45 minutes.  It should be nice and brown on top when it’s ready. 

Now, this is difficult, but it is important to allow any kind of crisp to set for at least 20 minutes before digging in.  I know it’s like torture, but you’ll be glad you did.  Your Thanksgiving guests will love your new sweet potato dish.  Or, if you’re just having a craving for sweet potatoes, like I was, you can just scoop some into a bowl and call it lunch. 

What?  I don’t see a problem with having sweet potatoes for lunch.  It’s a serving of vegetables, right? 

What is your favorite thing to do with sweet potatoes?