Homemade English Muffins on the Wood Cookstove

My dad and I have always enjoyed English muffins.  I remember Dad making English muffins from scratch a couple of times when I was young. I remember one time particularly well because we invited my paternal grandparents (and also our next door neighbors) down for supper so they could enjoy them with us.  We ate Dad's English muffins hot off the griddle, slathered with butter and homemade black raspberry jelly.

Years ago, I made English muffins using the same recipe that my dad used, and while they were delicious, they were dense and a bit on the rubbery side.  I remember that an engaged couple came to the house while I was making them.  I was going to be the organist at their wedding, and they had come to choose the music.  The muffins were ready to be baked as they were leaving, and I mentioned to them that I was disappointed in the texture.  The bride-to-be, in what appeared to me like an exaggerated attempt to impress her future husband, was telling me that I needed to have beaten the batter very hard for quite a while so as to get air into it.  She was sure that I would then have the nooks and crannies in the English muffins that I desired.

Well, fast forward nearly twenty years.  I've done a great deal more baking with yeast doughs, and I can tell you that the advice the young lady gave me would have worked for cake batter, but not English muffins.  With yeast doughs, to get nooks and crannies is an entirely different matter.  First, you don't want to work the dough for a long time because that activates the gluten in the flour, which will create a finer crumb texture.  Secondly, you want a very soft dough so that large bubbles can easily form; and finally, you want the dough to rise as quickly as possible because that will create bigger bubbles of gas too.

Thus, when I came across a recipe which was such a soft dough that the muffins had to be dropped rather than rolled and cut out, I knew I was getting closer to my desired result.  I've tweaked the recipe that I found and gotten the results I desired.  Now, when I buy English muffins in the grocery store, it will be for the sake of convenience, not because I can't make an equally desirable product.  What's more, for reasons that will be obvious in a moment, this is recipe that takes full advantage of a wood cookstove.  Here is what you do:

Into a large mixing bowl, pour one cup of warm water.  To it, add 2 tsp. of yeast, 1 tsp. of sugar, and a 1/2 tsp. of salt.

You can see that Granny's ugly avocado green Sunbeam Mixmaster
that I inherited 28 years ago and was going to "use until it quit" 
still hasn't quit.  In the picture above, it is outfitted with Sunbeam's
answer to the Kitchenaid dough hook.

While the yeast is proofing, put a tablespoon of butter in the measuring cup you used for the water and put it into the warming oven of the cookstove to melt.

By the time the butter is melted, the yeast and water mixture should be foamy.  Add the melted butter to it.

To the liquid mixture, add 2 cups plus 2 tablespoons sifted all-purpose flour.  Mix just until dough is stringy.

Scrape the dough from the edges so that it is shaped into a ball in the middle of the bowl.

Cover with a plate and put in a very warm place to rise.  This is key to getting the big nooks and crannies. Usually, I think the warming oven of the Margin Gem is a little too warm for yeast doughs to rise there, but it is perfect for this because you want this dough to rise quickly to achieve those big bubbles.

Let use until double in size.  It will be EXTREMELY soft dough.

Sprinkle cornmeal lightly on a jelly roll pan.  Using a greased ice cream scoop (I sprayed mine with Pam), drop the muffins onto the cornmeal in the size you desire.

Sprinkle the tops of each muffin with a little more cornmeal and return them to the warming oven door to rise quickly again.  This is why a wood cookstove is the perfect tool to make English muffins.

Just a little before you think the muffins will be ready to bake, preheat a griddle and melt a tablespoon of butter on it.  

Depending on how hot your fire is burning at this point, you may need to do this directly over the fire or slightly away from it.  Initially, my fire was quite hot, so my griddle started to the right of the fire.  However, just before baking, I put a couple of large split pieces on the fire that didn't take right away and cooled the stovetop a little.  That is why you will see my griddle move in the pictures below.

When you are ready to bake the English muffins, quickly slide a pancake turner under them to pick them up, using the cornmeal as the means to slide them onto the turner without deflating them.  Place them on the hot buttered griddle and bake until the bottoms are nicely browned and set enough that they can be turned.

Turn them when you can and continue baking on the other side until as brown as the first side.  You want to be sure to bake these for quite a while to get as much moisture out of them as possible, and they can become quite brown without being burnt.  Just watch them carefully.

When done, remove to a cooling rack to cool completely.

When the muffins are completely cool, you can split them and they are ready for toasting.  To toast them on the wood cookstove, I lightly butter the inside of the muffin and place them buttered side down on a small griddle directly over the fire. 

An English muffin half, toasting buttered side down.

The same English muffin turned so that the outside
is toasting and the toasted, buttered side is now up.

I slathered a dab of my homemade strawberry preserves on the buttered side, and it was wonderfully tasty!  These keep well in a plastic bag on the countertop until you are ready to toast them.

Baking Cornbread in a Wood Cookstove

When I was growing up, I could take or leave cornbread.  My mom used the same recipe that her mother Grandma Marian used.  Maybe the recipe was even Grandma Gladys's or from further back in our family than that.  I don't know.  While it was just fine, it wasn't my favorite recipe for cornbread.

I remember enjoying the cornbread that was served in school lunch, though, and I mentioned that to Phyllis, a family friend and now one of the ladies who comes in to help with the Monday Market baking here in the summer.  Years ago, Phyllis invited me over for supper on a night when she was serving her family cornbread, and her recipe was just what I was looking for!

Phyllis has graduated to a cornbread recipe that she says is even better than this one, but I'm sticking with this version--which I've changed a little from the original version.  Here is what I do:

In a medium-sized bowl, place 1 cup all-purpose flour, 1 cup cornmeal, 1/3 cup sugar, 4 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 tsp. salt.

Whisk all of these dry ingredients together.

Into a glass measuring cup, put 1 and 1/4 cups buttermilk, 1/3 cup salad oil, and 1 egg.

Beat these wet ingredients together until well blended.

Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredient mixture and stir only until well combines.  You don't want to over mix at this step because that will make your cornbread tough.  Pour all into a greased 8" x 8" dark square pan.  

Bake in a moderately hot oven (400ºF) until edges are slightly brown and have begun to pull away from the pan and the center tests done when a toothpick comes out clean.

I find that pulling a pan of cornbread out of the oven of a woodburning cookstove feels somehow--what is the word? "nostalgic" maybe?--since we know that this was a staple on the supper tables of history.  I notice that our local Fareway sells cornbread alongside the other bakery goods, but I haven't dared try it.  For one thing, I know that homemade cornbread does not keep well at all, so I figure there must be all manner of preservatives in what they sell at the grocery store.  Besides, this is not a difficult recipe, and I don't think anything could come close to the flavor of it fresh out of the oven.  

When I was growing up, cornbread was served with white corn syrup or molasses.  This is not my preferred method of serving it, however.  Stay tuned for the next post to see how I like to eat mine!

Aebleskiver on the Wood Cookstove

Granny, my grandmother on my dad's side, was 100% Danish, but I don't think she ever made Aebleskiver (or Ebelskiver), and I'd be willing to bet that her mother never made them either.  You see, my great-grandmother had ten children who lived to adulthood, and I'm sure there was no way she would have been able to make enough Aebleskiver at one shot to stave off their hunger.  I've never heard anyone say that Granny ever made Aebleskiver either, and that would be because she did everything in a hurry, and you just can't hurry these.

Literally translated, "Aebleskiver" means "apple slice," and I suppose that one could make these little things with an apple slice in the middle, but that is not very common anymore so far as I know.  What we southwestern Iowans call Aebleskiver is really more of a pancake or waffle that is shaped like a ball.  In order to make them, an Aebleskiver pan is required.  These are almost always made of cast iron with seven half-sphere wells in them.

A little anecdote about my pan: I bought this several years ago from an antiques vendor at Carstens Farm.  They had it priced at just over half the amount I had recently seen on one at an antique store, and the label called it an "egg cooker."  I happily plunked down the money for this heavy "egg cooker," but then had to carry it around the rest of the evening.  While Nancy and I were in line for Staley's chicken, someone came up to us and asked why I was carrying around an Aebleskiver pan.  I explained that I had just purchased it, that it had been labeled as an egg cooker, and disclosed the price I paid.  His eyes got big, and he said, "You stole it!"  'Fraid so, folks, and I have to confess that I don't feel guilty about it either.

Special note for wood cookstove cooks: New style Aebleskiver pans are constructed slightly differently than this vintage one.  In later pictures, you will be able to see that this pan has an apron around the outside which traps heat and fixes it so that the bottoms of the wells don't actually rest on the stovetop but are lifted ever so slightly above it.  For cooking on a wood cookstove, this is the style of pan that I feel is preferable.  The reason is that I often have removed a lid from over the firebox and placed the pan directly over the fire.  The apron around the edge of the pan prevents smoke from entering the room and also prevents cold room air from being sucked into the stove around the pan, creating very unevenly heated wells.  

1. The Aebleskiver pan needs to be very hot, so I start the process of making Aebleskiver by building a hot fire and putting the pan on the stove directly over the fire.

2. Even if you are lucky enough to have a well-seasoned pan, you are going to have to grease it between each set of Aebleskiver that you bake.  A very experienced Aebleskiver baker from a neighboring town told me that when her church has their annual Aebleskiver supper (a humongous fundraiser and social event there), they grease their Aebleskiver pans with a mixture of half lard and half white Crisco.  This really is important because the type of grease used definitely affects the flavor of these.  Hence, I put equal parts of the two fats in a dish up in the warming oven to melt.  If they are melted together, it makes it very easy to spoon some into each well.

(At this point, astute readers are saying to themselves, "Wait a minute, you just said that these took a lot of time and that it was impossible to make them for a crowd.  How can a church have an Aebleskiver supper?"  Well, I've only been present once many years ago, but let me tell you, these women have this thing down to a science!  They pull the electric stoves out of their slots in the kitchen cupboards and station a lady on each side so that each person is taking care of two Aebleskiver pans.  If I remember correctly, they have three stoves, so they are cooking twelve pans at once with six ladies dedicated to just turning Aebleskiver.  Others are engaged in providing the batter, etc.  It is an undertaking of epic proportions.)

Now, I'm going to share two different Aebleskiver recipes.  The first one comes from Bessie Ford, who was a cousin of my great-grandpa Doc.  By the time I met her, she was a quaint old lady who lived in an even quainter one-story house on the edge of Missouri Valley, Iowa.  She had no children of her own, but she had a nephew who lived somewhere fairly close, and she would have him and his family come down for Aebleskiver suppers.  This is the recipe that she used:

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

3 egg yolks

2 tsp. sugar

2 cups buttermilk

3 egg whites

Bessie's recipe makes very good Aebleskivers that are as light as feathers.  The internet is full of Aebleskiver recipes that are very similar, if not identical, to this one.

However, the next Aebleskiver recipe is my favorite.  It is the one used at the aforementioned local church supper, and--try as I might--I've never found a similar recipe anywhere.

5 cups flour

4 1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 tsp. salt

6 egg yolks

2 TBLSP. sugar

1 cup heavy whipping cream

4 cups rich milk

6 egg whites

No matter which recipe you decide you wish to try, the method is the same.

3. Mix your flour, leavening, and salt together.

4. Separate your eggs and beat the whites to stiff peaks.

5. Beat the sugar into the yolks.

6. Beat the liquids into the egg yolk mixture.

7. Combine the egg and dairy mixture with the dry ingredients.

8. Fold the stiffly beaten egg whites in last.

9. By now, your Aebleskiver pan should be hot.  I put about a half teaspoon of the melted shortening in each well.  I find it works best if the oil is so hot that it is just about to smoke.

10. Fill each well almost to the top with the batter.  I find that the gravy ladle that goes with our everyday silverware set is the perfect size for this task.

Here I am starting to bake the first Aebleskiver.
You can also see a Poffertjes pan on the stove.
We tried making Aebleskiver in it, but it
didn't work out, so we abandoned that idea 
early on and just used the Aebleskiver pan.

11. By the time you have finished filling the seventh well, it is very likely that the batter in the one you filled first will be ready to turn.  Using an ice pick or similar weaponry, gently lift one edge of the half sphere by catching it with the point of the pick and pulling up a little ways.  This will result in some more of the uncooked batter from the middle to pour out and form some more of the edge.

12. Repeat step #11 until you have perfectly round Aebleskivers, letting them cook long enough to be sure that they are not doughy in the middle.

13. Once they are done, they can be immediately served, but you may find yourself wanting to collect a few before sending them to the table so that more than a couple of people can eat at the same time.  This is where the warming oven of the wood cookstove really shines.  I like to put them in this stainless steel Wilton bowl that Nancy and I were given as a wedding gift.  The bowl is designed so that you could boil a vegetable side dish in it on the stovetop and then take it directly to the table to serve.  It is the perfect thing in which to store hot Aebleskiver in the warming oven before taking a bunch of them to the table at once.

Aebleskiver can be served in a number of ways.  Some people roll them in sugar or cinnamon sugar, or they could be dusted with powdered sugar.  My preference is to eat them with syrup.  The ones in the picture below are accompanied by red raspberry syrup made by a family a couple of counties to the east of us.

Don't think that syrup is necessary, however.  When we had all of my family here for an Aebleskiver supper after Christmas, the bowl of leftover Aebleskiver was sitting on the kitchen table waiting for me to bag them up for the freezer while everyone was leaving.  As they went by on their way out the door, my five-year-old twin nephews each grabbed one to-go and ate them plain.  I took that as a high compliment!

Aebleskiver freeze well in a plastic zipper bag, and microwave nicely when you are ready to eat them again.  Enjoy!

Potato Donuts

This recipe is an old favorite in our area.  Our recipe card says that our family got it from Ruth Anne Huff, who is a really sweet lady and a retired school cook.  She lived between my aunt and uncle and my great-great-aunt and uncle while I was growing up.  I'm pretty sure, though, that the recipe is also the same one that the Hazel Dell Extension Club used to make as a fundraiser when they would provide the concessions for a local sale.  Either way, it is an oldie but a goodie.

Just a fair warning up front: I wouldn't recommend trying this alone.  I've never made them by myself, and I have no desire to.  When you get to the point where you are cutting out the donuts, frying them, and glazing them, an extra pair of hands or two is most welcome.

Special note for my fellow wood cookstove cooks: Have PLENTY of smaller sticks and split pieces of wood ready.  In both of the wood cookstoves that I have fried donuts on, it takes a LOT of fuel to keep the oil hot enough to fry all of these properly!

Here is what you will need:

2 packages (2 TBLSP.) yeast
1/2 cup warm water
2 cups scalded milk, cooled to just warm
1/2 cup shortening (butter is better)
1/2 cup sugar
2 tsp. salt
1 1/2 cups mashed potatoes
4 beaten eggs
10-12 cups flour (We use bread flour for improved tenderness.)

Other food ingredients:
Oil or other fat for frying (I'd plan on a half gallon.)
sugar for rolling--OR--powdered sugar, vanilla, and a little butter for glazing

Our recipe did not come with directions, but here is what we do:

1. Scald the milk.  I do this in a heavy bottomed saucepan directly over the firebox.  You know it is scalded when tiny bubbles form around the edge of the pan or a scum forms across the top.  Remove from the fire.



2. While the milk is on the stove, dissolve the yeast in the 1/2 cup of warm water in your largest mixing bowl.  Don't mess around with any little bowl here; I'm not even sure that a half batch would fit in a standard mixer bowl.

3. Usually, I use leftover mashed potatoes that have been refrigerated. Since I don't want the cold potatoes to lower the temperature of the dough and thereby make the rising process longer, I like to put the cold mashed potatoes into the hot milk.  This cools the milk quickly and speeds the whole process along.  If the butter is cold, I put it in the milk too.  Leave this aside for a moment.

4. Sprinkle the 1/2 cup sugar over the yeast and water mixture.

5. Add the salt and stir a little.

6. Stir the milk, potatoes, butter, and beaten eggs into the yeast mixture. Be careful to get any large lumps of potatoes out now because it will be difficult later.



7. Begin stirring in flour.  You are shooting for a dough that is still a little sticky.  It should be less sticky than cinnamon roll dough, but more sticky than bread dough.



8. Cover and let rise until double in bulk.



While the dough is rising the first time, you need to do the following:

a) Prepare a place to roll out and cut the dough.

b) Have at least four of your largest cookie sheets or jelly roll pans ready to hold the rising donuts.

c) Put paper towels on two or three of your largest dinner plates because this is where you'll drain the donuts after frying them.

d) Prepare a place for the donuts to drain once they are glazed, or to continue cooling once they are sugared.  We use our broiler pan for the initial drainage spot and then transfer to a cooling rack that has been placed in yet another of our largest jelly roll pans.  This way, we can easily scrape up any glaze that drips off and recycle it in the glazing bowl.  I've seen pictures of Amish people sliding the donuts onto the handles of wooden spoons to drain, but you'd have to have a whole lot of wooden spoons for this recipe, and it won't work for the holes.

e) Prepare your dipping sugar or your glaze.  We always glaze because I think frosting of any kind makes the world go 'round.  We mix a couple of tablespoons of butter, some vanilla, water, and powdered sugar together to make our glaze.  For a single batch of donuts, you'll need at least two pounds of powdered sugar if you glaze them.

When the dough has risen sufficiently, punch it all down and roll out a fifth to a quarter of it at a time.  Roll it out to no thinner than a half inch.  Cut donuts out.  We have several donut cutters, most of which have removable center pieces that cut the donut holes.  I find that the most effective cutting method is to press down and then twist the cutter.  I know the twist is forbidden in biscuit cutting because it makes a lop-sided biscuit, but I have noticed no such effect on donuts.  Place each donut on a cookie sheet to rise again, leaving space between them for this to happen.



Because we like donut holes better than the regular donuts, I remove the center part of the donut cutter and cut holes out of any of the leftover spaces in the dough.  Once everything that was usable has been cut, knead the scraps together and add them to another hunk of dough to be re-rolled.

Here is where it gets tricky.  In my experience, the first donuts you have cut will be ready to be fried before you are finished rolling and cutting all of the dough.  Thus, while you are still cutting, you need to begin heating up your oil.  Mom used a Fry Daddy for donut making when I was little, but we have used cast-iron pans for the last many years.  My favorite pan to fry in is my cast-iron chicken fryer.  It is deeper than a regular frying pan, which helps reduce splatters--especially helpful on the wood cookstove.



We use canola oil to fry the donuts.  Mom used to use white Crisco.  I would like to try frying them in lard someday, but I haven't been brave enough to do it yet.

For the wood cookstove, I like to remove the front lid over the firebox and put my pan directly over the flames.  On a gas or electric stove, medium-high heat is needed.  I never put a thermometer in the oil to know how hot it is.  Here is how I tell whether the oil is at the right temperature:

• the oil should be just hot enough that it could start smoking at any moment
• I take a tiny drop (ONLY a tiny drop) of water on my fingertip and shake it into the oil.  If it sputters, it is ready.
• I start with a single donut hole.  If it immediately begins to bubble quickly, the oil is the right temperature.

If the oil is too cool, the donuts will eventually cook, but they will be greasy and will take on too much of the oil flavor.  If the oil is too hot, they will cook too quickly on the outside and be doughy on the inside.

Fry the donuts a few at a time until they are nicely browned on either side. Only turn them once!  Turning them multiple times will make them greasier than they need to be.  Don't fill the surface of the oil completely full of donuts because they will rise a little more while they are frying, and they can become very difficult and a bit dangerous to turn if they are too crowded.  The donut holes may not allow you to turn them, or sometimes they will roll over themselves.  If they don't get fried on both sides, it will be all right.  They are small enough to get cooked through if only one side ever sits in the oil.  Truthfully, I think they are better that way.

Remove from the hot oil to drain on the paper-towel-covered plates.  While they are still hot, roll in sugar or glaze.  Cool on the broiler pan or racks.

Hints:

• Using more than the 1 1/2 cups of mashed potatoes makes a better tasting donut
• THESE DO NOT KEEP WELL AT ROOM TEMPERATURE.  By the next day, they will be disgusting.
• However, THEY FREEZE BEAUTIFULLY.  Pack into Ziplock bags or airtight containers.  When you're ready to eat a few, just pop them in the microwave for a few seconds and they will taste as fresh as the hour you made them. 
• Our favorite way to make these is to make a triple batch and invite family over to have a great big "Donut Day."  Everybody goes home with bags of donuts for their freezer.
• You can make twists by twisting a cut donut.
• To make Bismarcks, roll the dough a little thinner and remove the center of the donut cutter to cut a regular circle.  Fry in oil that is a little cooler than what you would for donuts so that you can leave the Bismarck in the oil longer in order to cook the inside thoroughly.  Use a Pampered Chef decorator gun or a pastry bag full of jelly or other filling to inject the filling into the center of the Bismarck after it is cooked and cooled.
• Your house will smell like you've been deep fat frying for several hours after this, and you're going to have to live with it.

Historical note: My great-great-aunt Meme told me that when they had threshers, they always made them donuts for their 3:00 lunch break.  This was after a humongous noon dinner, so you can imagine how much energy those men needed to do their work!

As with any recipe, I'm sure there are as many ways to make these as there are people who do it, but the above is what we've found works best for us.

Baking From-Scratch Refrigerator Rolls in Your Wood Cookstove

When you are using a wood cookstove to cook all of your meals, you will likely have a hot oven at each mealtime.  When the cookstove is being fired constantly for home heating, you can have a baking-temperature oven in just a few minutes at any time of the day.  This adds an element of flexibility to the menu that one does not have with a modern range. 

That may sound strange, I know, but hear me out.  Now, obviously we only use our gas range in the summer months, but if we used it year 'round, I'm such a skinflint that it would bother me to turn on the gas oven for short, optional baking, so I would think twice when planning meals so as to avoid using the energy.  However, the fire that heats the cooktop of the wood burning range is also the fire that heats the oven, so no extra energy cost (or at least very little) is accrued by heating the oven--hence the extra flexibility.  Therefore, the recipe and method that I'm going to share in this post is one that I would never use in the manner that I'm going to show you if I were confined to using a modern range.

Some time ago, I received a reproduction copy of the 1950 edition of Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook (Wiley Publishing, Inc. and General Mills, Inc.). I think that it was a Christmas gift.  I haven't used it as much as I would like, but the prose centering around one recipe for refrigerator dough caught my eye.  I'm convinced that this is the precursor to the various canned bread doughs that we now see lined up so neatly in the dairy case at the grocery store.  Every cook knows that a meal is kicked up a notch when there is fresh yeast bread to be served with it, but sometimes schedules don't allow going to the trouble of mixing and proofing dough while making other food preparations.  This is the perfect recipe to help ease that process.

Of course, I rarely follow recipes exactly, so I've made some adaptations.  Here is what I did:

On an evening when we had mashed potatoes as part of our supper (I could have mashed potatoes every day and never get tired of them), I saved the water that they were cooked in.  It turned out to be almost exactly a cup and a half of potato water.  After we had eaten supper, that water was still warm, but no longer hot, and I started mixing the roll dough.

To the potato water, I added a tablespoon of yeast, then two-thirds cup of sugar, and a bit more than a teaspoon of salt.

To that, I added two eggs (I used duck eggs), 2/3 c. of room-temperature shortening, and about a cup of leftover mashed potatoes.

Then, I started mixing in All Trumps bread flour.  After I had added three cups of flour, I beat the dough very briskly with my spoon in order to get the gluten activated and the lumps of mashed potatoes broken down.

I stirred in approximately another three cups of flour and then turned the dough out onto a floured board and began to knead just enough flour into it that it stopped sticking to my hands.  It was still a pretty soft dough, though.

I put the dough into a clean bowl and coated it with thin layer of shortening. 

After tightly covering the bowl with plastic wrap, the whole thing went into the refrigerator. 

The key to keeping this dough in good condition is to keep it refrigerated and to be sure that you punch it down regularly.  I have kept it in the fridge for as long as six days.  I mixed this batch on Tuesday evening.  The picture below shows what it looked like on Wednesday morning just before I punched it down for the first time.

Of course, you could make all of the dough into whatever kind of roll you want and bake it all at once, but that would be a LOT of rolls, and really, the beauty of this recipe is that you can have so much flexibility and variety.  Here is what I did with this batch:

On Wednesday evening, I made cinnamon rolls.  Usually, I open the door of the warming oven on the Margin Gem, spread an old towel on it, and let loaves of bread and pans of rolls rise there.  I don't close the warming oven door because it gets too hot for the dough. 

However, because this dough is so cold after having been in the refrigerator, the closed warming oven is the perfect place to put these rolls to rise.  I put a hot pad on the floor of the warming oven and place the pan of rolls on that so that the pan is not conducting too much heat, though.

I baked these rolls in a moderate oven for about 20 minutes.  Remember, baking times are relative in a wood cookstove.

Now, because I had used a shiny pan, I knew that the bottom of the rolls would not be done enough, so I placed them on the middle of the cooktop for a few minutes.

That did the trick, and they were perfect.  After turning them out of the pan onto a rack to cool, I returned them to the pan and frosted them.

As I said in the previous post, I love frosting, but I have to tell you that I put too much frosting on these rolls.  This recipe makes a really rich dough, so I should have been more sparing.  When I ate these, I had to scrape some of the frosting off, and I NEVER do that!

On Thursday evening, I made plain dinner rolls to go with our roast beef supper.

Then, this morning, Nancy and I made the last of the dough into cinnamon twists.

This was the first time I had ever made cinnamon twists.  I talked to Janet L., who was a school cook when Nancy and I were still eating school lunch, and asked her how they made the delicious from-scratch cinnamon twists that we used to eat.  She told me to simply roll small pieces of dough between my hands like little kids do with Play-Doh to make "snakes."  Dip them into melted butter, then a cinnamon-sugar mixture.  Twist a few times and put them on the pan to rise.  It worked like a charm.

These were plenty large, so I'll try to make them smaller next time, but they were a big hit.

I'm going to continue to experiment with different kinds and shapes of these rolls, and I will continue to add pictures to this post to show the many possibilities that this recipe has.  I'm thinking that it would be very easy to coat them with some herbs and parmesan to make savory rolls, for example.  What would be your suggestions?  Let me know in the comments section below.