You may have noticed with the last post that there were rolls that looked suspiciously not like cinnamon rolls. That’s because they weren’t. You might remember that I mentioned that I made cranberry nut rolls with the other half of the dough. Because…I had.
I had a great deal of cranberry sauce (1lb of fresh cranberries, 1 cup of water, 0.75 cup granulated sugar, boil to death) leftover from Thanksgiving. This isn’t really a problem as I’m very fond of cranberry sauce. In fact, I typically make too much cranberry sauce and then jar it to use as jam through the year. But I saw someone had made cranberry sweet rolls, like cinnamon rolls but with cranberry sauce. I decided I would have to give that a try too, especially since I was going to make cinnamon rolls already.
The first attempt yielded rolls that didn’t have enough sauce. The recipe I originally saw suggested half a cup of cranberry sauce. That wasn’t enough cranberry punch for me. I was kind of ambivalent about the black pepper too. It wasn’t bad, but it was distracting me from the cranberry. I really like cranberries.
Also, it was really hard to roll. Cranberry sauce is…a sauce. There isn’t much friction to allow you to roll. I have the feeling it wouldn’t have been as much of a problem if I used her recipe for the dough. Hers baked up kind of like shortbread so I would guess that it would be easier to work with and roll with cranberry sauce. I used a more traditional, softer dough that you would associate with…cinnamon rolls. It made everything rather squishy.
Anyway, the second attempt I used a full cup of cranberry sauce and also a half cup of chopped walnuts spread over the sauce and I left out the pepper. This made it much easier to roll, gave me a nice cranberry punch, and gave the whole thing some texture. I think I like this version of the cranberry roll.
I actually did end up icing the cranberry nut rolls because I had leftover icing. Meh. I think it was better without. I did a nicer looking job with the icing on the cranberry rolls though.
Random moosages as I see fit. 