My Favorite Dinner Rolls

This is my favorite dinner roll recipe, and the only one that I've used more than once, for a couple of reasons: they're pretty easy, and they taste amazing. They're my favorite kind of dinner roll: very light, no yeasty taste, and a little on the sweet side. But they aren't super quick or anything. For the record, I don't really think there is any such thing as quick and easy, good dinner rolls. You just can't make good yeast-raised bread quickly! So there. Now you have my opinion on it.

This recipe takes about 2 hours from start to finish, which isn't fast at all, but it isn't bad for a yeast-raised bread recipe. As we go I'll tell you how to chop some time off the recipe if you're in a hurry.

Start with 1 1/2 cups of warm water.

I think, with a thermometer, the temperature should be between 110 and 115 degrees. Is that exact enough for you? I haven't ever really used a thermometer, but that's rather dangerous. If the water's too warm, it'll kill the yeast and the bread won't rise. If it's too cool, the yeast won't activate and the bread won't rise. Either way, you can't win. If you already bake bread, you probably have a feel for it. If you don't, you should use a thermometer.

Add 2 tablespoons of sugar to the water (psst: you could also use honey!).

Stir it to dissolve completely. If the water was warm enough, you should be able to completely dissolve all the sugar.

Now for the yeast. Drop 2 teaspoons into the water.

The yeast will all stay on the top. Don't stir it or anything, just let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes.

While that's happening, get out your mixer with the dough hook attachment. You can do it by hand of course, but bread is tough to mix by hand.

Dump 4 cups of flour a teaspoon of salt into the bowl of the mixer.

Now melt 2 tablespoons of butter. You can also use olive oil, though it might have too strong a flavor if you're sensitive to the taste of it, like me. You could probably even use regular oil, except that wouldn't provide as much flavor. Really, butter is the best idea.

This is what my yeast, sugar, and water looked like after around 7 minutes.

It smells weird, but don't let it worry you!

Make sure you stir it up before you move on to the next thing.

Pour the butter into the  yeast and water to make everything easy.

Turn the mixer onto its lowest speed and pour in the liquid.

Now you just have to step away and let the mixer mix! Occasionally scrape the sides of the bowl down, though. It took a good 3 or 4 minutes of mixing for me before the flour was totally incorporated.

Now when that happens, turn the mixer to the next highest speed and mix for about 5 minutes.

At the end of that time the dough is still pretty sticky, but it's more supple and elastic-y. (If there's a word for that, I don't know it).

Now just scrape all the dough into a bowl.

Cover the bowl up with a towel and let it rise for about an hour. Technically, it needs to be in a warmish place, but unless your kitchen is cold and drafty I don't think it really matters.

Here's where you can cut away some time, by the way. Let the dough rise for 30 minutes at least, but it doesn't have to be an hour. The rolls will be a bit heavier, but still tasty.

After an hour the bread dough looks like this!

Dump the dough onto a very clean, floured surface.

Now at this point, how you form the dough is up to you. I'll show you how I did it, but you can make as many or as few rolls from the dough as you'd like. If you don't use all the dough at once, it'll keep in the fridge for a day or two, but not any longer than that.

I patted mine into a rectangle....

And used a pastry scraper to cut it into 16 sections. You can use a pizza cutter, a knife, whatever works for you. Just make sure you thoroughly flour it before each cut so that it doesn't stick to the dough.

I rolled each piece roughly into a ball and put them in a buttered 9x13 pan in 6 rows of 4. Or 4 rows of 6, if you like that better.

Cover it up with a towel and let it rise for about 20 minutes, or however long you have. Mine rose for about 45 minutes because that's how long I had, and this is what they looked like. Again, if you don't have loads of time, you might opt for a short rising time here.

My little rolls matured into such lovely young people!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

 Meanwhile mix equal parts honey and melted butter thoroughly. I think I used about a tablespoon of each.

Brush half of it over the rolls. I added a sprinkling of kosher salt because it's interesting that way. You don't have to at all. But please don't skip the butter/honey thing. It's important! Really.

Now you can bake the rolls until they look like this.

That's about 15 minutes for me. But it does vary! You might have to bake yours longer or shorter because that's the way bread works.

Now you can brush the rest of the butter/honey over the rolls.

They're even more lovely in person.....

These actually taste better if they're not steaming hot, in my opinion, but don't let them cool all the way. There really isn't anything like warm dinner rolls out of the oven.

Enjoy them soon and surprise yourself with how easy it is to make dinner rolls at home!

Love, Tasha

Back to Blogging!!

Well, it's kind of been a while, hasn't it? My first and last post here was in March!! But as it happens I have a great reason for that. Since March, I've been doing mainly school, and I am now an official high school graduate! (Without the graduation ceremony, but hey, everything else has been done!) I can't tell you how good that feels. Does everyone feel like this when they graduate? I can't stop thinking about how good "Class of 2014" sounds. Yaaay!

Anyway, all that doesn't mean at all that I haven't been cooking. Here are a few things that I've made that I'd like to share with you here soon:

3...2...1....doughnuts!

Honestly, these are almost more fun to make than to eat.

We did a Memorial Day cookout this year.

We grilled PORK, which we haven't eaten in forever. We aren't pork eaters, and it was difficult to eat...but it was delicious.

On the sweet side of things, these are cake truffles. I actually made these a while ago, but I'd love to revisit them.

I'd also like to share the cookie recipe I use all the time.

There are so many other things I wanna post...and I'm pretty excited to share them here! For now, though, I'll just tell you that I'll post a recipe this week. The goal from now on is to post a recipe every week, and we'll just see how that goes.

Can't wait to start!

Sydney :))

The Ultimate Cheesecake! No, Really.

If anyone were to ask me what my favorite dessert is, my answer would be cheesecake without a doubt. But I'm picky about my cheesecake. It can't be light and fluffy; no, real cheesecake is dense and rich. But it can't be too moist either. I hate soggy cheesecake! And the crust can't be too greasy or too dry.

Unfortunately, I never was able to create my ideal cheesecake at home. In fact I was never able to create any cheesecake at home! My cheesecake always turned out thin and dry, with deep craters on the top.

So I quit making cheesecake for a while. But I hadn't quite given up the idea of creating the perfect one right here at home. I researched making cheesecake online and, lo and behold! Apparently you were supposed to bake cheesecake in a water bath to keep it from drying and cracking. (I'd never even heard of a water bath.) But on the other hand, water baths often (apparently) made your cheesecake soggy. Oh, and if you don't mix your cheesecake enough the results are (apparently) disastrous. Yet if you mix it too much, it'll crack!

While I was sifting through all these contradictory "Ultimate Cheesecake" recipes and tips, I came across one that looked legit. Still, it used that troublesome, tricky water bath. So I decided that instead of an actual water bath, where you float the cheesecake pan in an actual pan of water, I would do what I did when baking bread: put a large pan of water on the bottom rack underneath the oven and call it a day.

So with great trepidation I got out all my ingredients and made the cheesecake, documenting every step. And at the end of the day, it came out.....perfect.

That's my little story. Of course I had to share it. Now that you've read through all that, let's get to the actual cheesecake!

To begin with, here's a picture of the things I used:

As for an actual list:

Graham Crackers
Butter
Cream Cheese
Granulated Sugar
Milk (What you see in the picture is Half'n'half. I mixed it with water since I didn't have milk)
Eggs
Vanilla
Sour Cream

I also used some brown sugar and flour, which are optional and so not pictured.

To begin with, preheat the oven to 350.

Now make the crust for the cheesecake. I used about 13 crackers, which made a rather thick crust.

Break the crackers up and throw them into a large bag.

Now get out a rolling pin and smash the crackers to crumbs! This shouldn't take too long.

I could have smashed mine smaller than this, but I don't mind larger crumbs in the crust.

Now melt 3-4 tablespoons of butter.

Pour the butter into the bag. I added a tablespoon of brown sugar before this step, because I wanted a sweeter crust. But you don't have to. It's all about personal taste!

Making the crust of a cheesecake is all about feel. I needed about 4 tablespoons of butter for my crust. You should be able to squeeze a handful of the crust without it crumbling apart immediately. Don't add more butter than that, or the crust will burn.

Now prepare the pan!

This is a springform pan. It's what you normally use to make cheesecake. That's because you can take the sides off at the end and have a perfect cheesecake, without having to worry about sliding it out of the pan without tearing it. (I'll show you!) Some people do use cake pans, but I'm sure it wouldn't work. Not that I've ever tried it...

First, cut out a circle of parchment paper slightly larger than the bottom of the pan.

I then buttered the sides of the round part of the pan, because I didn't want the cheesecake to stick.

Now close the pan and press the parchment paper down onto the bottom.

Dump in the prepared crust!

Use your fingers to pat it down, then use the bottom of a glass to get it flatter.

Bake the crust in the oven for 12 minutes. This is to keep it from getting soggy.

While the crust is baking, prepare the batter.

Here's all the cream cheese! IMPORTANT: it must be room temperature!! This is 4 blocks. Most cheesecake recipes use 3, but I like to taste the cream cheese flavor itself. This really does it, and it also helps with making a richer, denser cheesecake.

Throw the cream cheese into a bowl.

Add 1 1/2 cups of sugar.

Mix the cream cheese and the sugar ON LOW SPEED or by hand until it's just combined. It really is important not to overmix the cheesecake! (I'll tell you why in a minute.) And I totally forgot to take any pictures of anything being mixed. I was too worried about not overmixing.

This is 3/4 cup of milk and 4 eggs. That's what goes into the cheesecake next.

Again, I don't have a picture of the mixing. I added the milk and mixed on low until it was just mixed in. Then I added the eggs one at a time. This was when it occurred to me to take this picture:

Doesn't tell you anything, does it.

Anyway, after all this was mixed in, I took the bowl off of my stand mixer and mixed it by hand. Here's a cup of sour cream, 1 tablespoon of flour (optional) and a tablespoon of vanilla.

Mix it until it's just combined.

When all this has been mixed together, pour it into the (closed) springform pan on top of the pre-baked crust.

And now: this is important! (Again, I'll tell you why soon.) Wrap the pan in a piece of heavy duty foil.

Now preheat the oven to 250. That sounds low, but for cheesecake, it really isn't.

This is a large roasting pan. You can use any large pan, even a 13x9. I wanted it to be as large as possible, but that's not really important. The big deal is the steam/condensation.

Fill the pan halfway with water.

Now carefully stick the two pans in the oven:

Just like that.

Now you are going to leave the cheesecake for two solid hours. Don't open the oven! Not even for a peek.

Once the two hours are up, don't take out the cheesecake. Again, don't even open the oven! Instead, just turn the oven off and let the the cheesecake sit for about 5 hours. Yes, 5 hours! It does matter.

And while the cheesecake is (metaphorically speaking) still in the oven, I'm going to take a minute to explain to you some of the things I left hanging earlier.

1. Not overmixing the cheesecake. If you do this, it causes too much air to enter the batter, and this in turn causes cracking.

2. Wrapping the pan in foil. Springform pans leak. Wrapping the pan prevents little pieces of cheesecake falling out and steam getting in the cracks, which causes a waterlogged cheesecake.

3. Preheating the oven to 250. A high temperature causes the cheesecake to burn easily. You don't want a brown crust on the top of a cheesecake. And it encourages cracking, too.

4. Letting the cheesecake cool in the oven for 5 hours. Removing it too soon and trying to cool it will do bad things to the texture of your cheesecake.

Ah, now. Don't you feel better? And now for that cheesecake!

After 7 hours, it was no longer light. So I had to take this picture in the dark, and as I'm not good with my flash, here's what happened:

At least you get the idea. Cover the cheesecake in plastic wrap and refrigerate it overnight before serving.

Here it is the next day!

Open the springform pan.

The advantage to using parchment paper on the bottom of the pan is that you can slide it easily onto other surfaces, like this.

Plus the crust doesn't fall apart when you try to slice it.

Now you can do things like this, if you want.

All I did was decorate the cheesecake with fresh fruit and chocolate shavings. (Just stick some chocolate in the freezer for 15 minutes and then use a vegetable peeler or small knife to produce the shavings).

Nice and simple.

But it sure did make a pretty cheesecake!

This was the test.

The test was passed! This cheesecake was just perfect. It turned out dense and rich, and not too moist, and without cracks!! A triumph.

Whipped cream on cheesecake is a must.

Make it soon! Especially if you're a cheesecake fan.

Variations:

You can put whatever you like on top of a cheesecake. Any kind of canned pie filling (blueberry, cherry) would be wonderful. Strawberry topping is a classic. Oh, and try white chocolate! It'll probably change your life.

Love, Tasha