A sweet day of sweet rolls. We had to research and convert cinnamon bun and coffee cake recipes that we wanted to try out, and somehow, Gale Gand pulled through on both of these. Gand’s recipe for coffee cake calls for a 9 inch square pan, but we had to convert it for a 10 inch round pan… which turned out to be too big for the batter, so even while it was still on the oven, the center fell. It still cooked properly and tasted great (the concensus classified it as a keeper; great combo of golden raisins and almonds, buttery, dense-yet-light-n-cakey, evenly spicy and nutty), but it looked like what it really wanted to do was be a bundt. The slight lack of focus is my fault, however…

The cinnamon buns called for a honey schmear to be spooned into the muffin cups and then the cut rolls to be placed on top of that. I think that Gand used larger muffin cups than we had available, for a more even shape, but I came to appreciate ours, which I guess aspired more towards a UFO shape (they expanded a lot in the oven). The advantage of this was a syrupy center while the edges remained drier–so that contrast provided a bit of choice for every bite. Some people thought that they weren’t sweet enough, but they were just right for me.

Our cinnamon bun army was matched by our Stollen army.

They look something like jelly donuts here, but they are more like sweet brioche rolls flavored with raisins (plumped before baking), lemon and orange zests, and slivered almond. They were shaped as lip-like parkerhouse rolls, but came out rounded anyhow. While they were still warm, we brushed them with melted butter, rolled them in sugar, and then sprinkled them with powdered sugar. If Krispy Kreme had a non-deep fried sweet roll cousin, this would be it — almost like eating sweetened air, these light rolls also packed a wonderful citrus, almond, and raisin punch…. especially when warm out of the oven.

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