12 Projects of Christmas: Holiday Rolls

I don't know about you, but one of my favorite parts of the holidays is the food.  Not just the yummy desserts (well hello there, Christmas cookies...) but all the food in general: mashed potatoes, Mom's green bean casserole, turkeys and hams, all of it!  My favorites are usually the ones high in carbs--which is definitely no bueno for my waistline.  But here's my excuse:  if it's only one small period each year, then it's okay to indulge a little, right?  :)

Today's project is one of my favorite parts of the meal--the rolls!  I know, I know...with all the other delicious food, why in the world do I go for the rolls?  Maybe it's the carbs, or the fact, that it's a total comfort food for me, or maybe it's just because I can't resist a warm roll or piece of bread straight out of the oven.  But either way, I look forward to a warm gooey piece at the beginning of each meal.  So here's one of my favorite recipes.  I do mine in the breadmaker because I have no patience for the kneading and rising, but this can be done the traditional way, too.

First, the ingredients:

1 1/4c of milk
1/2c sugar
1 1/2tsp of salt
4Tbs butter
1/4c warm water
4 1/2c bread flour
1 packet (or 2 1/4tsp) active dry yeast
1 egg (not shown)

Whether you're doing this in a breadmaker or not, the first step is to make our warm milk mixture.  Over medium heat, warm your milk until it gets a skin on the top that wrinkles when you wiggle the pan.  Don't boil the milk, though!!  Add the butter, sugar, and salt, turn off the heat, and stir until it's all dissolved.

Set it aside until it's cooled to lukewarm.
Breadmaker: Put the warm water and lukewarm milk mixture in the bottom of your breadmaker inner chamber, then add all of the flour, and finally put the yeast on top.  Set your breadmaker to the DOUGH setting (you don't want to bake it in the breadmaker, just let it mix, knead, and rise in there)

Traditional: Combine lukewarm milk mix and warm water in a large mixing bowl and stir in about 4 cups of the flour to begin your dough.  Put the remaining flour on the board and knead it into the dough.  You should knead until the dough looks like satin--if it's a little too sticky, you can knead more flour into the dough about 1Tbl at a time, but don't add too much flour or your dough will break and not stick to itself.  When it's ready, put back in the mixing bowl, cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place (I like to use the stovetop oven vent while it preheats) until it doubles--usually 45-50 minutes.

Turn out onto floured countertop.  If you are doing this in a breadmaker, do not punch the dough down.  If you are doing it traditionally, punch the dough down slightly, but not so that it's flat.

One recipe will make about 20 rolls, so divide your dough into 20 pieces.  I do this by cutting the main dough ball in half, then halving each section until I have 20 equal-sized pieces.

Take each piece and roll until each one is about a 7 inch snake.  Take each snake and tie a knot in the middle of the dough, then fold the extra ends over itself and tie in a second not.  Place each dough knot in a lightly greased muffin tin cup.

Bake for 10 minutes at 350*, then brush the top of each with an eggwash (1 egg and about 2Tbls of water whisked together) and bake for another 10-12 minutes.  The tops should be shiny, golden yellow/brown.

These rolls are slightly sweet and very dense, but so delicious!  They go great with my homemade apple butter :)  Hope these bring a new flavor to your holiday meals and that your family enjoys them (carb-load and all! haha)

Happy holidays!
xoxo, Melissa

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Tutorial: Bread in a Can

A few weeks ago, while having coffee with my friend from college, Krissy, I told her about how I found this great idea for making bread in a can from this great craft blog.  After going on about how it combined my two loves: baking and crafting, and how much I couldn't wait to try this project for my blog, she asked me if I could wait just a few more weeks to do it, but that if I did wait she would pay me for it.

Um.  Duh.  Of course I will--are you kidding me?  I have a million other craft ideas to create and blog in the mean time!

She's a high school teacher who needed a nice gift for her secret pal at work, and thought that bread in a can would be perfect!  She told me she'd pay me for the materials, plus for my work (I told her none of this was necessary, but she insisted) and that she's need them at the beginning of October.  Perfect!  I can make yummy Fall quick breads in cute cans, and it's a great excuse to go crazy with the decorating--I mean, who wants an undecorated, uncute gift?  No one!  Let the crafting begin!

So this week, I made bread in a can.  Again, I can't take full credit for this--it's something that's been going around the crafting world for a while, and I got my banana bread recipe from Chasing Fireflies.  What I didn't get from her wonderful blog was a recipe for a pumpkin quick bread (which I already had) and the ideas for how I was going to decorate these beautiful cans.

If you want the banana bread recipe, head over to Chasing Fireflies because she has done an amazing job with the recipe and her own design of the cans.

Here's my recipe for pumpkin quick bread.  You can add walnuts to it, but since I didn't know if the receiver of this gift has any allergies, I decided to leave it out this time.  But it's definitely yummy to add a 1/2 cup of walnuts to this before you bake it!

Pumpkin Quick Bread
1 1/2 c flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 c sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 cup pumpkin puree (canned or fresh)
1/2 c veg oil
2 eggs, beaten
1/4 c water
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp cinnamon

 First, mix your dry ingredients (including sugar for this recipe) in one bowl and your wet ingredients in another bowl.  Super easy, right?

 Now is the hard part:  mix them together.  Okay, I'm kidding; this is not hard.  In fact, this might be one of the easiest recipes ever.

 Instead of baking them in a loaf pan or muffin pan, I'm baking them in washed out veggie cans!  One can for pumpkin, one can for Chasing Fireflie's banana bread, and a third can (not pictured) for the leftovers so that I can munch on them...hehehe...

 All I did was take off the lid (make sure to use a can opener that doesn't leave a jagged or sharp edge), take of the labels, and wash them out very well.

Before you pour your bread into the cans, though, you need to make the new pretty labels.  Trust me, this is way easier before you bake them than after!  I just chose 2 different scrapbook papers that have complementary colors, plus 2 small tags.

 Take the paper and wrap it around the can with the pretty side facing in.  This way, you can draw on the paper without worrying that the receiver will see it.

 Draw around the edge of the bottom of the can so you know where to cut.  I used the inside part of the bottom lip so that I'll have a silver can border around the edge of each paper.  You can kind of feel where it indents, and then I just used a pencil to mark it.

 Cut your paper on the pencil line, and voila!  You have a new, much prettier label for your bread cans.  You don't want to bake the labels, though, so don't attach them yet.

 Next, I traced the tag onto the scraps of paper left over, cut it out, and glued them on so I had matching tags for each can.

 You can see here are my 2 labels and 2 tags.  Since they are complimentary colors, you can mix and match the tags and labels if you want.

 Now, fill your unlabeled cans.  I filled each of them 3/4 of the way full.  Be careful!!  If you fill them too full, they will bake over the top and that won't be a very pretty display--it can also fall off into your oven and make that awful burning smell....not that I know from experience or anything...

 Once they come out of the oven, let them cool completely before you try to put the labels on.  I put them in the fridge overnight to ensure that they were cool enough.  I also then let them warm up to room temp before I tried to put the labels on, so the cold can didn't cool the hot glue too fast for me to put the labels on.

I used hot glue to attach the labels to each can.  Go slow, only gluing a small portion at a time, and make sure you line up your label before you glue or your label might be warped when you're finished.  I didn't take pics of this because it's hard to hold a camera, a can, and a glue gun all at the same time.  But here are the cans after they were labeled:

 Next, I cut plastic wrap just big enough to cover the tops of each can with just a little hanging over the edge.  This will keep them fresh before you give them away.  I used 2 layers of plastic wrap, just to make sure.

 I used 2 squares of matching fabric on each can, just laying them on top with alternating points, and then folded the edges over the can lip.  I used twine to secure the plastic wrap and material down (to keep them fresh) and then used twine to tie a pretty bow on top with my labels.

Here they are all finished:

How cute are these to give and get?!  A great gift for a friend, coworker, teacher, new neighbor--anyone would love to get these!!  :)

Totaling up the cost of these is a little harder, because it depends what you have on-stock in your cupboard.  This is definitely a project/gift that you can do for under $10 though!

So go ahead and give it a try--even if you don't give it away, and you just make some bread in a can for yourself to eat on a crisp Fall afternoon!  Bon appetit!


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