KA Cinnamon Swirl Pumpkin Rolls

I hear a lot about KA flours when reading everyone else's blogs, and I always knew they were a source for a vast array of flours. For years, my dad had a hard time getting his hands on graham flour to use in an old family recipe until he finally stumbled upon it on the KA website. But I buy flour in the store and don't really venture too far beyond AP and whole wheat flour, so I never had much of a reason to visit their website. Then I was reading a post by Jessica of A Singleton in the Kitchen for a soup recipe which she served with Garlic Knots. They looked so yummy in the picture and I knew I would be making soup this weekend with the impending Nor'easter, so I followed the link to the KA website. And boy was I surprised- so many different baking products, baking utensils, gadgets, cookbooks... They have EVERYTHING there!

While I was perusing the website, I saw this pan that looked really neat. It was a stoneware dish that was made especially for cinnamon buns and below it they had a link to their recipe for cinnamon swirl pumpkin rolls. Oh my gosh- seriously?! They sounded amazing. So I quickly printed out the recipe and decided to make them for our Saturday breakfast.

The dough could not be any easier. You literally dump everything into a bowl and turn on the mixer with the dough hook. The only thing that makes me a little nervous about recipes like this is you don't proof the yeast. To me there is nothing worse that putting forth all the effort to make bread only to find out it won't rise. But it slowly began to puff up in my oven- phew! The dough was incredibly easy to work and rolled out without sticking to the counter or the rolling pin. I did not have the cinnamon mix it called for so I just brushed melted butter on the dough and sprinkled with a generous portion of cinnamon sugar. I cut into 11 rolls which was much more than the eight the recipe said it yielded (these would be some seriously huge rolls) and refrigerated overnight. I took them out in the morning for the final rise which took about an hour and then popped them in the oven. Oh boy did these smell wonderful when they were baking! The smell of the pumpkin and spices were just what we needed to warm us up on a cold and blustery day. I mixed up the cream cheese icing from the Sweet Melissa Baking Book we used for last week's sticky buns and waited for the buns to finish up.

I was so excited to taste these and had been building them up in my mind all week! Unfortunately, I was a little disappointed with the end result. I probably shouldn't have made these on the heels of last week's sticky bun recipe because I think I had really high expectations for them. The rolls seemed a little too dry, which could have been a result of the whole wheat flour the recipe calls for. I was also expecting a much more pronounced pumpkin flavor. To be honest, if it weren't for the orange hue of the buns, I would not have known there was pumpkin in them. In all fairness, they were still pretty decent cinnamon buns, just not what I expected. In my opinion, if I am going to go through the effort of making a recipe like this, I want it to knock my socks off.

I still like the idea of pumpkin cinnamon rolls and have not given up on them yet! I think I may try to play around with one of my other favorite cinnamon roll recipes or try to tweak this one. You can find the recipe on the KA website here. Oh! And sorry about the picture... its very dark at 6:30 in the morning...

Sticky Buns with Toasted Almonds

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays' recipe was chosen by Jen of Not Microwave Safe, Sticky Buns with Toasted Almonds. Now let me first begin by saying that sticky buns are HUGE in my husband's family and my mother-in-law makes awesome sticky buns. Over the past several years, she has been gracious enough to bestow her sticky bun making skills on me and I have always used her recipe. So I was a little nervous about this one... the recipe has a lot to live up to in our house.

I was hoping to make this for breakfast on Saturday morning, so I threw the dough together on Friday after I came home from work. My first and only issue with the recipe came with kneading the dough. It seemed very sticky to me, but I didn't want to add too much flour otherwise the buns can turn out super tough. Luckily, I remembered the group ran into the same issue when they made Bee Stings a couple months ago and I believe it was Wendy of Pink Stripes who suggested continuing to knead the dough to release the gluten in the flour. So I decided to let the mixer do its magic and walked away. About fifteen minutes later I came back to perfect dough. Yeah!


The dough rose beautifully. I had just pulled dinner out of the oven as the dough was finishing so I left the door open for a few minutes and then popped the dough in to rise. About two hours later, it had started to rise above the bowl, so I tightly wrapped it with plastic wrap until I had my girls in bed and I could assemble the buns. When I did get around to putting them together, they assembled very easily. My big alteration to the recipe was I covered the bottom of the casserole dish with chopped pecans and raisins before I put the buns in. I guess this is the more traditional approach to making sticky buns (at least in every bakery around here). I would have loved to try the almonds, but knew my husband would not be a big fan.


I woke up Saturday morning and started the second rise for the buns. After about an hour in the oven with the hot water bath, they were ready to bake. And did they ever smell wonderful in the oven! They baked much faster than the suggested baking time- mine were finished in a little under twenty-five minutes (this is my one criticism of the Sweet Melissa Baking Book- the cooking time always seems to be overstated)- so if you decide to try this recipe, be sure to keep a careful eye on them after the twenty minute mark.

So I know I said I was nervous about this recipe because of how wonderful my mother-in-law's recipe is, but oh were these good! They were different, very tender, but oh so delicious. Full of butter and cinnamon, and I loved the flavor the maple syrup gave to the sauce. I will definitely be making this recipe again! In fact, and don't tell anyone in my husband's family, I think I like this recipe a littler better than the one I had been using.


Great pick Jen- this recipe was a huge hit in our house! If you would like the recipe, be sure to wander on over to Jen's blog. And be sure to check out what all the other Sweet Melissa Sunday bakers thought!

Orange Scented Scones

This week's Sweet Melissa Sundays recipe was chosen by Robin of Lady Craddock's Bakery. I have to admit, I was a bit surprised by her selection this week. You see, she is a personal trainer and this recipe has to be the most fattening one in the entire book. I am not kidding when I say this recipe has no redeeming qualities (unless you add some chopped up fruit to them). These scones are literally fat and flour mixed together to create something called breakfast, or tea depending on where you live.

I absolutely love scones. There used to be this little British tea shop near us that sold scones, and I absolutely loved them. Every couple months, I would stop by and pick up a half dozen of them and a package of fruit pastilles (my roommate in college was from South Africa and she turned me on to them). Delicious! Unfortunately, they have since closed. And talk about timing on their part- I went to buy scones the last weekend they were open only to find a burned out building when I turn into the parking lot. Evidently the restaurant next to them caught fire the night before and it literally burned down to the ground. So they only really lost one day of business and I'm sure there was not that much left in the shop at that point. Lucky for them, not so lucky for me!

Since the tea shop has closed, I have been on a quest to find scones that could match up. There is a little shop in our town called Talula's Table that has pretty decent ones, but they aren't quite as good. Maybe I'm just biased because scones seem to taste a little different when you buy them from someone with a British accent. Then I made this recipe... and I can report with great satisfaction that I think I have finally found something to fill the dark sconeless void I had been previously left with.

I first made the recipe a couple months back when I initially bought the book. I had a brunch after my brother-in-law's wedding and made all these different kinds of scones based on the recipe. I was so anxious the first time I made them, hoping they might possibly hold up to their British counterparts. Thankfully, they did. Everyone at the brunch loved them, including me. Though I felt a little guilty when my mother-in-law's best friend started raving over them as she was telling me how she had just been to the doctor and he told her her cholesterol was too high. But it was a little late at that point!

As for the recipe itself, it is super easy to throw together. I only have one of those mini prep food processors so I had to cut the butter in to half of the flour and then mix in the rest. This time around, I opted to use lemon zest in the first batch instead of orange since lemon scones are my absolute favorite. Some other flavor combinations I have made in the past are lemon-blueberry (my daughter's favorite), orange-cranberry-pistachio (one of my favorites), and apple cinnamon with a cinnamon glaze.

For the second batch, I tried experimenting a little. Remember how I said the recipe is fattening? If you make it as written, there is over a tablespoon of butter in each scone AND it uses cream instead of milk. When I was taking yoga before, someone had told me you can sub-in flax meal for butter at a one to one ratio so I decided to give it a try. I also subbed buttermilk, my wonder ingredient, for the cream. My "healthy" scones rose beautifully in the oven and smelled great, but I was a little dismayed when at first glance, they looked a little dry. I grabbed one off the tray and anxiously broke off a piece to try. I was really hoping they would taste incredibly good, but I am sad to report, I prefer the full fat version much better. However, the flax meal version still passes as a decent weekday breakfast. I had one this morning toasted with honey and enjoyed it. Next time, maybe I will do half butter and half flax meal to see if their turn out any better. I am determined to make them better for me!

Thank you so much Robin for picking this recipe! Hands down, it is one of my favorite recipes from the Sweet Melissa Baking book so far. If you would like to try the recipe for yourself, check our Robin's page or buy the book for yourself. It will not disappoint you.