Closeup of cranberry walnut rolls — photo: Jim Simons

For the main dish at the Cherry Creek Chorale’s Saturday-morning rehearsal breakfast, I’m making my old reliable Union Square Breakfast Casserole. I didn’t make enough of my Caramel-Apple French Toast casseroles last time; I think for this event I’ll make a six-fold batch. But . . . I have some nice ham on hand that I need to use up, so I’m just going to dice that up and use it instead of the Italian sausage called for, and I’m going to make 1/3 (so two panfuls) without the ham so it can be vegetarian/kosher. I won’t have to brown sausage, which is a whole step in the recipe. [Also, later update: I didn’t do the fresh mushrooms, nor did I cube the bread. The casseroles were pretty thrown together, but they tasted great.] You do need to follow the recipe for the egg/milk proportions and for the basic amount of bread, but beyond that you can do pretty much what you want. Which I did!

For the bread/muffin component I’m going to make cranberry-orange rolls. I’ve used a recipe from the magnificent Smitten Kitchen website before and they were good, but I don’t know—I always think that the standard egg-enriched dough that’s used for sweet rolls is too . . . doughy. So I was looking around online and ran across a King Arthur Flour recipe for cranberry-orange buns that doesn’t have eggs in the dough but does have dry milk powder and potato flour. (Those ingredients add moistness and flavor but, since they’re not eggs, no egginess. Funny how that works!) KAF wants you to buy their versions of those two ingredients, but regular old dry milk powder and mashed-potato flakes do just fine. So I tried out the recipe this morning and the result is above.

One big reason for my making a test batch of the rolls was to see how they tasted when the shaped rolls were in the refrigerator overnight. Unfortunately, while I put the ingredients into my bread machine last night before we left for a dinner and set the timer for the dough to be ready when I got back, I didn’t realize/remember that I had to press “start.” The ingredients were still just sitting there at 9:00. So I re-set it to be ready this morning and made them then, and I have a question in to KAF about the feasibility of the overnight rise. You can usually do the make-ahead version as long as you reduce the yeast, but I haven’t always been happy with the results. (One batch of another recipe was inedible; it had a funny taste from the dough’s sitting too long, a condition called “overproofed.”) [Another update: KAF got back to me and said that I didn’t really need to do too much yeast reduction for this type of rich dough. So I cut the yeast from 2 tsp. to 1 1/2, as noted below, but in the end I did double batches and left the yeast at 1 1/2 tsp. It worked great.] I also realized this morning that I didn’t have any fresh cranberries on hand; I usually have a bag or two in the freezer, but I guess I finally used them up. (Fun fact: fresh cranberries are available only in the fall and winter, with the rest being made into juice after that.) But, fortunately, I had just impulsively bought a big bag of dried cranberries at Costco, and the recipe calls for a combo of fresh and dried anyway, so I just used the dried ones along with some walnuts, whizzing everything up in the food processor. I was pretty pleased with the results, And Craisins, the brand name for the dried cranberries that Ocean Spray makes, don’t have any sulfites and are processed with a minimal amount of sunflower oil. They make a point of saying they use “cane sugar,” with is no healthier than high-fructose corn syrup, but it shows that their hearts are in the right place. According to the nutrition info on the bag, a 40-gram serving (1/4 cup) is almost 75% sugar (29 grams), but it’s not clear how much of that is added sugar. If you use fresh cranberries you have to add more sugar anyway. Another point in favor of the KAF recipe is that it calls for a very low amount of sugar: only 1/3 cup for the entire recipe, about a third of what other sweet-roll recipes require, for a whole cup of fresh cranberries plus 1/2 cup of the dried. But that’s an awful lot of filling, and while I’m all for reducing unnecessary sugar those proportions would seem to produce an overly-tart end result. I just used the dried cranberries I had and added some walnuts (maybe 1/2 cup), whizzing everything up in the food processor. I used frozen orange juice concentrate instead of orange juice, and I didn’t cook the filling. Of course I used freshly-ground whole-wheat flour, but you don’t have to do that. PLUS, one last refinement—I bake sweet rolls in muffin tins. If I remember to take a picture Saturday I’ll post that below, too. [Update #3: I didn’t.] If you bake sweet rolls all squished together in a pan the center ones don’t get brown on the sides, and I don’t think they get really done in the middle. Since I’m making these for a crowd, I want people to be able to come through the line and pick up the rolls easily without a mess. And one last point (really, this is the last one): I don’t put glaze on my sweet rolls, partly to reduce sugar but partly because the glaze is just a distraction from that lovely homemade dough and filling that I’ve slaved over! But I’ve added a note at the end of the recipe about how KAF says to make it, just in the interest of thoroughness.

Cranberry-Orange Rolls

A not-too-sweet version of the popular flavor combo in a rolled-up dough that's sliced and baked like cinnamon rolls.

Course Breakfast

Cuisine American

Servings 12

Author Debi Simons

Ingredients

Dough:

2 cups flour, all-purpose or (better) white whole wheat
1/4 cup butter, softened (4 oz. or 1/2 stick)
1 tsp. vanilla or orange flower water
1/16 tsp. orange oil, optional (a small amount, really just a few drops, but it's very strong)
2 tsp. yeast, or 1 1/2 tsp. of letting dough rise overnight
2 tablespoons sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 cup non dry milk powder
1/4 cup potato flour, starch, or instant mashed potato flakes
2/3 cup lukewarm water
1/4 cup orange juice

Filling:

1/4 cup orange juice or (better) orange juice concentrate
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted if possible
pinch salt
1 tablespoon butter

Instructions

For Dough:

Using a bread machine or stand mixer with dough hook, mix together all ingredients for dough. If using bread machine, put through on regular dough cycle if you're going to bake the rolls right away or the short/quick cycle if you're going to refrigerate the formed rolls to bake the next day. If stand mixer is used, mix until a smooth dough forms and then cover and let rise for an hour for immediate baking or about half an hour if going the fridge route.

For Filling:

Since this is a small amount of ingredients, use the smaller inner bowl of your food processor if you have one. Put the dried cranberries and sugar in first, then process until as smooth as possible, probably a couple of minutes. Add nuts and process again, checking that they're pretty much pulverized, then add orange juice and butter and process again. You want to end up with an easily-spreadable paste. Doing the processing in steps like this helps you make sure that everything is smooth.

To Assemble:

Pat or roll dough into a 12" x 16" rectangle. (Yes, you should measure it, and you should try to get the corners as square as you can.) The dough is very easy to work with. I find that spraying the counter with cooking spray works well and doesn't have you adding extra flour which could make your lovely dough dry and tough.
Spread the filling on the dough as evenly as you can and covering all of it except for 1/2" or so on one long side. It will be a very thin layer of filling, and that's exactly what you want. Use a flexible spatula for best results.
Roll up the dough starting with the long side that has filling to the edge, then pinch the unfilled edge onto the outside of the dough. You'll inevitably end up with the middle of your roll being thicker than the ends; I'm not sure why. Before you cut the roll into pieces, therefore, do a little (gentle) squeezing and stretching out from the middle until the whole thing measures 24".
Cut the rolled-up dough into 12 pieces. (Use that ruler again and make knife marks at 2" intervals.) You can use a serrated knife or (much better) unflavored dental floss that you use to slice without squishing. Here's the flossing technique, described at the KAF website:
"Slide a long piece of dental floss under the dough. Wrap it around the top. Pull tightly in opposite directions to pull the floss through the roll."
Get yourself a roll of cheap waxed unflavored floss and store it in your kitchen drawer.
The best way to bake these so that they get browned on all sides is to bake them in muffin tins. I use parchment paper liners; you could also use foil liners. If you don't use liners be sure to grease the muffin cups well.
Bake at 375⁰ for 20 minutes or so, checking at 15 minutes. You want them to be well browned on top and to have an internal temp of 190⁰-200⁰. Cool on rack.
I don't think these need a glaze as they're wonderful on their own, but if you feel that you have to add it you can mix a cup of powdered sugar with 1-2 tablespoons of orange juice or concentrate and drizzle over the rolls. But really--you don't need it!