Cherry Morning Rolls

I actually made these a couple of weeks back, but it took me a little while to get round to doing this post. Unfortunately, it may be difficult for me to sustain my rate of a post per week... blame the homework/essays/coursework/revision. I did, of course do a little Mother's Day Creation, but haven't quite finished with the photos yet, so I will try to get that done over the next couple of days.

These rolls could be adapted by changing the preserves or nuts- you could even replace the preserves with chocolate chips (and the almonds with hazelnuts or pecans). A Christmas version of these could also be done by adding a dusting of nutmeg or perhaps using a jam complimented by sherry. They are great while still warm from the oven, but will stay fresh for a couple of days- and freeze well, too. I found the recipe from Always With Butter's blog, but the recipe for the dough was found on Food Network.

When you roll up the dough, after having spread it with the butter, preserves, cherries and almonds, some of the filling will ooze from the roll, creating a disturbingly red-splattered counter top. This is fine- you can just scrape up the filling and push it into the folds, but make sure you have cleared enough space on your work surface for this.

Remember to start preparing the dough the night before, as it needs to rest in the fridge overnight pre-baking.

If you can't find frozen cherries on their own, they can usually be found in bags of mixed frozen berries (I used some from Tesco which consist of 25% cherries).

Cherry Morning Rolls

Makes 8-10

Ingredients:
4 egg yolks

1 egg
50g (1/4 cup) caster sugar
85g (6tbsp) butter, melted
180ml (3/4 cup) buttermilk- if you don't have buttermilk, add about 1tsp of lemon juice to 180ml water

480g plain flour

2¼tsp yeast

1¼tsp salt

Filling:
40g (3tbsp) butter
85g (3/4 cup) frozen cherries, thawed and halved
370g (13oz)cherry preserves

55g (1/2 cup) slivered almonds

Frosting:
225g (2 cups) icing sugar, sifted
2tsp vanilla extract

Method:
1. Whisk the egg yolks, egg, sugar, butter and buttermilk in a freestanding mixer, and add half the flour, the yeast and the salt. Knead the mixture together with a dough hook and add a further three quarters of the remaining flour. Continue adding the flour until the dough stops being sticky, but is still moist and smooth, then continue to knead lightly for 5 minutes.

2. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for 30 seconds before placing into a large, lightly oiled bowl. Cover the bowl and leave for 2 hours, or until doubled in size.

3. Butter a 9x13 inch casserole dish. Turn out the dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out into a rectangle measuring 18x12 inches.

4. Spread the butter and cherry preserves onto the dough and sprinkle the cherry halves and almonds on top.

5. Roll up the dough into a log and slice into 12 equally-sized rounds (1 inch- thick each)- bear in mind that a fair bit of the filling will ooze out of the sides, but this can simply be stuffed back in through the folds. Arrange the rounds into the casserole dish, so the spiral of filling in each piece is facing up. Cover the dish in cling film and refrigerate overnight.

6. Fill a roasting tin two-thirds full with water and place on the bottom rack of the oven (while it is off) Uncover the casserole dish and place on the middle rack of the oven. Leave for 30 minutes before removing both pans and preheating the oven to 350F/180◦C/mark 4. Place the casserole dish in the middle of the oven for 30 minutes, or until golden brown.

7. Add a couple of tablespoons of milk or water to the icing sugar in a medium-small bowl until evenly incorporated. Add the vanilla extract more milk/water as required to reach a runny, but not too thin consistency. Drizzle the frosting over the rolls once they have cooled, then slice out each roll and serve.