Rolling Up the Leftovers

Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday last week! And I hope you all got a hold of some great deals between Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

The holiday here was lovely! The only thing that burnt was the French fried onion topping on the green bean casserole. Overall, a lovely success! One of my favorite things about making all of this food for one day is the leftovers! Especially Thanksgiving leftovers! Everything seems to reheat well, making dinner for the next 2 days a breeze! This is good, because I needed those 2 days to put my kitchen back together!

As you may have guessed, I also love turning leftovers into new dishes. I enjoy the real simple ones like turkey noodle soup with turkey stock from the bones and cold turkey salad on sandwiches. Then I also like to come up with something a little bit different or new. This year, I popped my baked beans in the freezer with the intention of making cheesy bean dip for guests this coming weekend. I also threw some leftover stuffing in the freezer. I plan to use that to make meatballs.

The new use for leftovers I am most excited about this year is Cranberry Rolls! Now, in previous years, I have taken leftover cranberry sauce and used it to fill crescent roll dough that you get out of the can. I roll the crescent dough around a teaspoon of cranberry sauce, bake until the rolls are done, and top with simple powdered sugar and milk glaze. This year, I decided to take the same idea and step it up by making cinnamon roll dough instead.

I was also thinking that I wanted to add a little texture and just a little more jazz to these things so in my dough recipe, I substituted about a cup and a half of flour for ground up quick oats. I contemplated a cream cheese frosting for this but I decided to stick with the simple glaze to make sure you could really taste the cranberry sauce. Now, I make a very simple cranberry sauce to start with; just sugar, orange juice and fresh cranberries. So to spruce that up a little bit, I tossed in a bit of cinnamon and butter. There’s got to be some rule somewhere that you can’t make rolls like this unless you use butter.

The way I roll when it comes to cinnamon rolls, or cranberry rolls in this case, is I make one batch and split it in two, one for the morning and one for the freezer. These things are best fresh from the oven. The best method I have found so far is to let the rolls go through their second rise, bake them until they are just set and starting to get just a touch of color, then take them out to cool. At this point, I refrigerate one for the next morning and I pop the other in the freezer. When it is time to serve, I put them back in a 350°F oven for about 15-20 minutes until they heat though and turn beautifully golden brown. For me, this works because I don’t have to get up at a ridiculous time in order to serve these puppies for breakfast but they still come out piping hot and fresh!

As my little girl put it, “my belly likes these cranberry rolls”. I baked a pan of 8 rolls this morning, there are 2 adults and 2 children under the age of 4, and there are no leftovers… ‘Tis the season to indulge right?

Cranberry Rolls

Dough

1 cup warm milk (110°-125°F)

1/3 cup butter, melted

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup sugar

1 packet active dry yeast

2 eggs

3 cups flour

2 cups quick oats

Filling

1 cup, or so, leftover cranberry sauce

1/2 heaping tsp cinnamon

4 Tbsp butter, softened

Glaze

1 cup powdered sugar

1-2 Tbsp milk

½ tsp vanilla extract

Add 2 cups of oats to blender. Pulse until the oats have broken up and resemble coarse flour. Set aside.

To stand mixer bowl, add milk, butter, salt, sugar and yeast. Mix on low 30 seconds to allow the yeast to activate.

With the mixer on low, add blended oats. Then add flour 1/2 to 1 cup at a time until soft dough forms and begins to leave the side of the bowl. Turn the mixer up to begin kneading dough. (At this point, I like to remove the dough to a floured surface and knead by hand for 5-8 minutes)

After dough has been kneaded, place in greased bowl, cover loosely and set in warm area of kitchen to rise until double (about an hour).

While dough is rising, mix cranberry sauce, cinnamon and softened butter. If your cranberries are in large chunks, consider doing this step in the blender or with a potato masher to create a relatively smooth filling. Set aside.

When dough has doubled, turn out on a floured surface. Use rolling pin to roll dough into a rectangle, about 1/4 inch thick. Spread filling evenly across rolled out dough.

Begin rolling the dough the long way to make a long log. You will have to roll some-what loosely to avoid squishing out all of your filling. When dough is rolled into a log, use a serrated blade to slice into 16 rolls. Place rolls in greased baking dish, cover loosely, and allow to rise for about another hour.

Bake rolls at 375°F for about 20 minutes. If you plan to refrigerate or freeze rolls, remove from oven when rolls are just set and barely starting to show color*. If you are serving immediately, continue baking until rolls are golden brown.

While rolls are cooling, mix together powdered sugar, milk and vanilla. Poor over rolls and serve warm.

*To finish rolls that have been refrigerated or frozen – thaw frozen rolls over night in the fridge. Preheat oven to 350°F and bake rolls for about 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Mix glaze and poor over rolls as usual.