Cinnamon Rolls for 40 Hungry Swimmers

 Every year the High School swim team has breakfast at a swimmer's home after Saturday morning swim practices. We have volunteered each of Katie's four years to host a meal, and cinnamon rolls are the most-requested food I've ever made. Little do the teenagers know, but there is healthiness in them thar treats.

I'll start with the original recipe, from my Grandmother.

Potato Refrigerator Rolls- makes 4 dozen 
1 1/2 cups warm water
2/3 cup sugar
2/3 cup soft shortening or margarine
1 c. lukewarm mashed potatoes
1 package dry yeast
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
7 to 7 1/2 cups flour

In a bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Stir in sugar, salt, shortening, eggs, and potatoes. Measure flour. Mix flour into other ingredients until dough is easy to handle. Turn onto lightly floured surface. Knead until smoothe and elastic. Place in greased bowl, turn dough so greased side is up. Cover with a damp cloth. Place in the refrigerator overnight or for 4 to 8 hours. Remove from the fridge and shape into loaves, dinner rolls, coffee cakes, cinnamon rolls, etc...

Cover and let rise until double- about 2 hours or more depending on room temperature. Heat oven to 400 degrees and bake 12 to 15 minutes.

I have made this recipe, with some changes, many times. I reduce the amount of sugar by about 1/2 and use butter or vegetable oil instead of shortening or margarine. I also use part or all whole wheat bread flour in place of the the white flour. The potatoes and refrigeration of the dough makes a very nicely flavored bread.

But for my cinnamon rolls... I like to use either sweet potatoes or winter squash puree in place of the mashed potatoes. You can see from the pictures that I used two squash from my garden (and I saved the seeds!). This is January, and this variety has sat on my counter, inside, and shown NO sign of rot. I also had some pumpkin butter in the fridge that I wanted to use up.

First, I sliced the squash and roasted the seedless flesh at about 300 degrees until soft and slightly browned. The next time I will slice it
lengthwise so that the cut edges could lie against the pan and the skin could be exposed to the heat. Instead, the cut edges of the flesh became dried out. Oh well. Then I scraped out the soft flesh with a spoon and mashed it up well with a fork. I could have used a mixer, but mine is not working :)

I measured 1 cup of lukewarm water and 1 Tablespoon of dry yeast into each of four mugs to proof the yeast and set them aside.

I blended the fresh squash puree with the pumpkin butter and measured about 8 cups. I put 2 cups pumpkin into each of my four largest bowls. I added 2 teaspoons salt, 1 cup brown sugar, 1 cup melted butter and a dash of vanilla to each bowl. I show a photo of my homemade vanilla. It is very easy, and FAR less expensive than buying good vanilla extract. Another post for another day. Anyway, I also beat and added 4 eggs to each bowl. Then the wet ingredients, plus the dissolved yeast, were mixed well with my trusty spatula.

Finally, I added 7 cups of whole wheat bread flour (fresh flour is essential because whole wheat flour does go rancid) and 3 cups unbleached white flour. I mixed the dough in each bowl well and kneaded it for 4 or 5 minutes. The dough should be really soft and moist. If it is stiff or dry it won't rise very well

When all four (double) batches were finished, I put them all together into a very-well-washed and olive-oiled plastic storage bin with a good lid. The bin went out to the garage, where the cold, but not freezing, temperatures would slow fermentation and allow the flavors to blend nicely.

This is the dough the next morning. I kneaded it down and returned it to the cool garage for another half day before I could make the cinnamon rolls.

In the afternoon, I rolled out a ball of about 1/8 the total dough (about 1 batch) and spread it with apple butter. Then rolled it up. The trick is to keep working to roll out the dough to about 1/4 inch thick. It helps to have a really soft, moist dough.

Then cut pieces off, about 1" wide. I actually set aside the farthest left and right pieces to re-roll at the end (I find the end pieces are the smallest and least popular... poor cinnamon rolls).

Then I put all the spirals in a well-buttered pan to rise for a few more hours with plastic wrap or a lid covering them.

This is about 1/2 the total number of rolls. I made 143 rolls total :)

Fresh out of the oven. I baked them at about 375, until browned. (I'm not always good about the timer.) I baked all of the cinnamon rolls the day before the breakfast and covered them and kept them in the kitchen until the morning. Then I warmed as many as would fit in the oven at 250 degrees for 10 or 15 minutes and took them out as the swimmers arrived at our house.

Meanwhile I made a buttercream frosting: melted two sticks of butter with a dash of vanilla, then added powdered sugar (almost a whole pound bag) until it reached a pleasing consistency.

Warning! Frosting is addictive. The kids will put on ridiculous amounts of frosting if left to their own devices. I ended up making two batches of frosting.

So, here are the swimmers enjoying their cinnamon rolls and breakfast burritos. A group of athlete-actors had to swing by and grab food as they rushed off to play practice. Another group of carefully coifed kiddos (!?) arrived later. But there was enough for all, enough for seconds and thirds...

And these guys know how to make the cook happy. They gave me a round of applause and many heartfelt thank-yous. Yes, I will definitely do it again!