Winsomebulldog: April 2012

After yesterday's Buttered Rosemary Rolls, I decided to try the shortcut version of the Golden Honey Pan Rolls that I already know are fantastic. The link will take you to the full recipe that has instructions on how to make them from scratch, using a bread machine. I'm going with the short version here, using store-bought dough, which means the rolls themselves won't have any honey in them. I'll just use the glaze from the original recipe and see how they turn out. I'm fairly certain that they'll be very nearly as good as the from scratch version.

Here's the recipe for the glaze:

1/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 tablespoon honey
1 egg white

This is the recipe for a full 13" X 9" pan of rolls, but I'm not going to bother trying to halve it. Half an egg white? I don't think so. And just in case you've never, ever done anything like this before, I'll include a few pictures of the process. Brace yourself.

Step 1: Go to the store and pick up a bag of Rhodes frozen dinner rolls. Bring them home and toss them in the freezer. When you're ready to fix your rolls, take the bag out of the freezer and cut it open.

NOTE: You'll notice in the upper right-hand corner of the bag that it has an arrow with the words "EASY OPEN Tear Here." This is a blatant lie. I tugged and pulled and twisted and not only was it not easy to open, it in fact did not open at all. No tearing, though the plastic did stretch quite well. I eventually had to resort to using a pair of scissors. (This may well be the hardest part of this recipe.)

Step 2: Pick a pan. Any pan, assuming it's not so large that 36 rolls couldn't hope to fill it up when fully risen. Unless you're cooking for an army or possibly a potluck dinner, an 8" or 9" cake pan should be plenty big enough. If you want to get really rustic, break out a cast iron skillet. I'll admit the skillet makes a lovely presentation, but since I'm more interested in eating them than looking at them, and since I have not yet crossed into the world of professional food blogger, I just grab whatever is handy. For this post, I went all out and broke out a "fancy" piece of Corning Ware, so the pictures would look pretty. Yep, I'm trying that hard to impress you guys.

Spray the pan with cooking spray and place the rolls inside.

(See - pretty pan.) You have a couple of options at this point. One, you can lay a kitchen towel over the pan or you can spray a sheet of plastic wrap with more oil and lay it over the pan. (Do I need to point out that the towel should be clean?) Pick whichever way suits you, then just set the pan aside and WALK AWAY.

That's right. You are DONE for literally HOURS! Just go do something else.

This shot was taken after 6 hours. (My kitchen was fairly cool, especially in the morning when I started. Your rolls may thaw and rise faster or slower, depending on ambient temperature, altitude, humidity, etc. Basically, just leave them alone until they're big enough that you're happy with them.) Mine in the above pic are risen enough to be baked, though I'm letting them go longer just because I'm hoping to wait long enough for my hubby to come home so that he can have them fresh out of the oven. They will keep getting bigger. The bigger they get, the more careful you'll have to be when brushing on the glaze because they'll be so fluffy that too much pressure will make them collapse. (If that happens, they won't look very pretty, but they will still taste just fine.)

Step 3: Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Mix up your glaze.

It will be slimy and VERY thick. But once baked, it is oh, so good. Brush, or if your pan is big enough and your rolls haven't risen to the point of billowing over the sides, drizzle this concoction over the rolls.

By this point (after about 9 hours) mine had risen so much that I couldn't get as much of the glaze on them as I would have liked. My rolls completely filled up the pan, so none of the glaze could ooze down to the bottom, which meant that most of the sweet goodness was confined to just the top of the rolls. If I'd glazed them when they were smaller (say, in that earlier picture after about 6 hours of rising) the glaze would have more fully permeated the bread and they'd have been sweeter than they turned out to be. Still good, mind you. Hubby polished them off with no hesitation, and like I said yesterday, he's not really a bread eater.

Step 4: As soon as the oven is ready, place the pan into it and bake for 15-20 minutes or until they're golden. Mine were ready after just 15. If you know your oven cooks really fast, you might want to back the temperature down to 325 degrees, just to make sure you don't over-brown them.

Take 'em out and let 'em cool just long enough so that you can handle them without needing a trip to the emergency room. Begin scarfing them down.

This is insanely easy. And the sweetness, especially when done like this, isn't so overwhelming that it gives you a toothache. In the original recipe, the dough itself is sweetened with honey, so it's by default sweeter even without the glaze. Still, this is a really nice way to get almost the exact same flavor without all the extra work. And it's really especially nice since rising bread isn't something that requires constant attention, freeing you up to do whatever else you need or want to do. Hope everyone enjoys them!