First of all, I need to state for the record that I’m on a sweet roll jag. I made these over the weekend. I made an orange marmalade version yesterday. And of course, every Christmas, I make approximately forty million batches of cinnamon rolls and deliver them to friends. (Give or take 39,999,960.)
I love sweet rolls.
I think about sweet rolls.
I try to find any excuse to make sweet rolls.
I try to find different combinations of sweet rolls to make.
Second of all: Guess what? Huge news! Enormous news! Alert the media! I have just created a Sweet Roll category on The Pioneer Woman Cooks.
Sweet Rolls! on The Pioneer Woman Cooks
All the recipes are zero-calorie and fat-free. In my dreams.
I make these Lemon Blueberry Pancakes for my kids, and they love them. I suspected they’d love these, too. And guess what? I was right!
I suspect you’ll love them, too.
First we’ll make the dough! I include these dough photos in pretty much all my sweet roll recipes, but I don’t want you to have to click over to another post to see them. So forgive the sweet roll dough redundancy if you’ve already seen this process.
Into a pot, pour four cups of whole milk…
A cuppa of sugar…
And a cuppa canola or vegetable oil.
Stir it around and let it heat up over medium heat until it’s “scalded,” which my mother always told me means “hot but not boiling.”
So just before it starts to boil, turn off the heat.
I can’t tell you how many times I have walked away from the milk mixture only to come back to find it bubbling violently and tragically over the sides of the pan.
But it’s only made me a stronger person.
After you scald the mixture, you’ve got to let it cool to just warmer than lukewarm but not hot. Specific enough? Ha. After it’s to that temperature, add 8 cups of flour.
Sprinkle two packages of active dry yeast right over the flour, and I’d like to invite you to observe the strange phenomenon that is going on with my thumb in this photo. What in the name of all that is holy?
If I promise that my thumb looks nothing like that in real life, will you tell me that youthinks that I protesteth too much?
Okay, fine. Let’s just move on. But let the record reflect that I’m traumatized by this photo.
Stir the mixture around until it’s all combined. It’ll be tremendously sticky!
After you stir it, you need to cover the pot and leave it for an hour. Go live your life!
After an hour, take off the lid (obviously, Ree!) and add an additional cup of flour, a tablespoon of salt, a heaping teaspoon of baking powder, and a scant teaspoon of baking soda.
Stir it around (it’ll be a little more difficult than the last stir, but surge on) until it’s combined…then you can use it right away or do what I did and stuck it in the fridge overnight! That’s one of my favorite sweet roll maneuvers: make the dough the night before.
When you’re ready to make the rolls, melt some butter (you just need a stick, but I did extra for another piece of mischief I was getting into.)
And zest two lemons.
To use in the filling, I decided to make a lemon sugar along the lines of the stuff in Flo Braker’s famous Pull-Apart Coffee Cake, which I think was the genesis of the whole pull-apart bread craze. Put the lemon zest on a plate…
And sprinkle on some sugar.
Use your fingers to work it together, adding more sugar or lemon zest as needed.
The mixture should be pretty, sparkly, pale yellow, and slightly (ever-so-slightly) tacky.
Lemon sugar. Yum!
As always, this dough recipe makes two batches of rolls, so reach into the pot and grab half the dough…
Plop it onto a floured surface…
And press it into a rough rectangle shape.
From there, roll the rectangle nice and thin, much more wide than deep. I usually shoot for about 30 inches by 10 inches.
The point is to get it really, really thin.
Grab the melted butter…
Drizzle it all over the top…
And smear it with your fingers so that it totally covers the surface. Leave no inch of dough uncovered or the entire batch will be RUINED! Just RUINED!
Don’t pay any attention to me.
No, really. It’s best.
After the dough’s all buttered, grab the lemon sugar…
And sprinkle it all over the surface.
Shake shake shake…
Now, I just guesstimated on the amounts here; in hindsight, I should have mixed up more lemon sugar so that there was a nice, semi-thick layer of the stuff. You should definitely see sugar all over the place.
Next, because I was afraid the rolls would be too, too, too, too sweet, I very lightly sprinkled a little kosher salt over everything. Just a little bit.
And finally: Blueberries!
I sprinkled them all over the top.
Now, again: I was just guesstimating. I didn’t want to overdo it on the blueberries because I was afraid they’d bleed and freak out all over everything. But (warning: spoiler alert) actually, when I ate the finished rolls, I wanted more blueberry. More tartness. So next time, I’ll add more!
Roll the dough toward you, making sure to keep it nice and tight as you roll it.
When you’re finished rolling it up, pull up the seam and pinch it to seal.
Then turn the roll seam-side down to keep it all together!
Bush some pans with melted butter…
Slice rolls with a sharp knife…and don’t worry when you slice right through the blueberries! You’ll never know it later.
Place them in the pans, then set them aside for 20 minutes so they’ll rise a bit while you preheat the oven.
Sometimes if I want to hasten this along (which I almost always do, because I want sweet rolls now, not later) I turn on the heat under an iron skillet or two, let them heat up just a tiny bit, then turn off the heat. Then I place the pans inside the skillets…
And cover them with tea towels.
When they’ve puffed up a bit, throw ’em into a 375 degree oven for about 15 minutes or so, until they’re nice and golden brown. Make sure they’re definitely golden brown on top, as that will ensure that the rolls are done underneath (some of the blueberry juice will collect at the bottom, so they need a little extra baking.
While the rolls are baking, you want to make the icing so that it’s ready to pour right when the rolls come out of the oven. Throw some powdered sugar and some more lemon zest into a bowl…
Then pour in some whole milk.
Whisk it all around until it’s really smooth, then squeeze in some of the lemon juice.
Add more lemon zest if you think it needs a little…
And pour in a little melted butter just to give it a nice consistency.
The rolls are done! Hallelujah.
And they look and smell just divine.
So right after you pull them out, drizzle on the icing.
Mmmm, baby.
You want to drizzle on the icing while the rolls are warm, because then it oozes down into the cracks and crevices and the whole thing becomes miraculous and…well, miraculous.
Ta-da!
Enjoy these, my friends! They’re so, so dreamy and a nice twist on regular cinnamon rolls.
