Cherry "Cinnamon" Rolls

My fall sewing has ended and my Christmas sewing is just beginning..... But for right now I am free to blog a few tasty things. This is a recipe I experimented with for my friend Tracy. Every now and then we have to have a bun (cinnamon roll) and a cup of tea (rooibos tea), and de-stress and the regroup. I need it as much as she does. (I hope she needs it as bad as I do).
I wanted to try something different the other day and I had seen a Cherry roll at a local tea shop and had to give it a try. I used my regular cinnamon roll dough recipe (whole wheat) and added my own home canned cherry pie filling (recipe to come). It was fabulous! So here is what I did.

Cherry Rolls

Dough:
2 Tbsp dry yeast
6 Cup whole wheat flour
2 Tbsp Gluten
2 tsp salt
6 Tbsp (non-instant) dry milk (1 cup instant)
1/2 cup instant potato flakes
2 Tbsp lecithin (optional)
2 cups hot water
1/3 cup honey
1/2 cup butter
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 eggs

Dissolve the yeast in the water. Add the honey, eggs, milk, salt, lemon juice, butter, potato flakes, and lecithin and 1/2 the flour. (mix the gluten with the flour or it will clump). Beat well and let rise. Add the remaining flour and kneed for 8-10 minutes. Let rise for 1 hour.

Filling:
1/3 cup honey
1/4 cup butter
1 can cherry pie filling

Mix honey and butter together.

Roll out the dough into a large rectangle. Spread with honey and butter mixture. Top this with cherry pie filling.
Roll into a "classic cinnamon roll". Cut with dental floss or a heavy thread. Makes 12 very large or 24 small cinnamon rolls. Place on a buttered pan or cookie sheet, cover and let rise for 20 minutes.
Bake at 375 deg F for 18-20 minutes.

Frosting
1/4 cup butter
4 oz cream cheese
2 cups (maybe a bit more) Powdered sugar
vanilla extract
Milk if needed

Mix the butter and cheese together. Add the sugar and vanilla. Whip into frosting. Add more sugar or milk if needed.
Frost the rolls when the come out of the oven, this melts the frosting all over the place and it is gooey, sweet and warm.
Heaven!

Tips and Tricks I have learned:
*non-instant powdered milk is tricky to work with. If you don't mix it in just right, it clumps. I have found that you either need to whisk it in carefully (not something I ever remember) OR mix it with your flour. This spreads it out and there is no clumping. The same goes for the gluten. It clumps something terrible, however, mixed with the flour there is no problem.
*Oven proofing - I have found that if I "proof" or raise my cut rolls in the oven, they get much bigger and fluffier. This is quite an accomplishment with 100% whole wheat. What I do is heat the oven to 200 deg. F and then TURN IT OFF. While that is heating, I boil a kettle of water. When the rolls are cut and in the pan, I our the boiling water into a baking dish in the oven and slip my rolls right in there. I let that set for 20 minutes. I remove the rolls and the water, heat the oven to temperature and bake as usually. The buns get really big. Because of this, I space them well on the pan so they are NOT touching when I put them in, they will be when I pull them out to bake.

These rolls are "proofed" and ready to bake.

Happy Halloween

This year we have:

Sushi, Sally (nightmare before Christmas), The cleverest Witch, A princess, and Toothless

We had fun, nearly sewed my fingers together. It is so worth it to see them have so much fun designing them.

Yarn Dyetorial

Isn't that lovely?!

Step two of my Yarn Experiments was to dye the yarn.

So...... Here is a quick tute of what I did for this project.

1.

First I put the yarn into hanks of about 2 oz each (weight).

Then I got them wet with water and squeezed as much out as I could.

2.

Then I mixed up my dye concentrates (remember I told you how to do this HERE.)

After I mixed the concentrates. I mixed them to the desired colors (just had fun really mixing). I mixed enough to make 1/2 cup of the mixtures. Then I added enough water to that to make 1 cup.

3.

Then I poured the mixed and diluted dye over the wet hanks of yarn. I put two together at a time so I would have about 4 oz of each color I mixed.

Let that sit for 15-20 minutes.

Then Add 1 cup of prepared Soda Ash Solution (instructions found HERE).

Let this sit for 1 hour to over night.

Then rinse in running water until the water squeezed from the yarn runs clear.

Line dry for several hours. I did bring some in because it was starting to rain (fall in Missouri is mostly rain or the threat thereof.) I put it in the dryer on "delicate" setting and it dried all right. It got a bit fluffy but that made it feel so soft and wonderful.

Now to do my project with it!

New Projects

With Fall and Winter coming now I am in the mood to start a new project. Not some "I'll be done in ten minutes" kind of project but one that will take me weeks and maybe months. I am pretty excited about this one. Maybe I will even post a tutorial or two along the way and it progresses.
At any rate, I am going to enjoy this and by blogging it, MAYBE, I will be able to keep the ADD factors in check and actually finish it. We will see.
Here is the first picture.

It actually took me all day to put this yarn into hanks. Horrors. I had no idea how long it would take or that it would make the muscles in my arm pit hurt either. :o) Now I have 3 or so shopping bags full of these loopy hanks of yarn, ready for step 2.

Dyetorial - Basic Scrunched Folds

Yay for blogging one a month. I am sorry. I meant to get these out a lot sooner but Fall is turning out to be just as busy if not more so than summer was.

At any rate, here is your first "Hands On" Tie Dye tutorial.

The Quicky Basic Scrunch Fold

This is the fastest and easiest way to "tie dye" a shirt or piece of fabric.

Instructions:

1. Start with a 100% cotton shirt of your choice.

Wash it with sinthrapol (just a cap full) to get any residue off your fabric. I do this with everything I am going to dye to make sure there is NOTHING on the surface of the fabric that will inter fear with the dying process.

Do not dry the shirt, leave in damp.

2. Lay the shirt out flat on a clean work surface.

3. Starting along the bottom edge of the shirt, walk your fingers up the shirt, scrunching it together into random pleats as you go up the shirt.

4. Tie the shirt together. You may also use rubber bands or small zip ties if you like. You just want to tightly secure the shirt in its random pleats and folds.

5. Soak the Shirt in your soda ash solution for about 5 minutes. Squeeze as much of the solution out as you can.

6. Place the shirt back on your clean and now plastic covered surface. Apply the dye colors of your choice in what ever order you choose to BOTH sides of your shirt lump.

Be as bold or concervative as you wish with your color combinations. The shirt will look like a real mess. That is the point. Don't be shy about squirting that dye in there. If you don't, you will have lots of white showing in the shrits.

Remember that with tie dye, you get what you get. It is always a suprise.

7. Put the drippy dyed shirt bundle in a plastic bag and let it sit for up to 24 hours. I have found that you need to let it set for a minimum of 3 hours. So experiment and see what you like. 24 hours is a safe starting point.

8. Now you will rinse the shirt bundle out in cool running water. This is safe to do outdoors but the dye will stain anything it comes in contact with. It will eventially face so don't worry about permanent dammage to sidewalks and such.

9. Cut the strings and open. Now you will need to wash the shrit with Sinthrapol again to make sure all the excess dye is discharged from the shirt. I wash these in the washing machine with 2-4 Tablespoons of Sythrapol per load.

Dry on the line or in the dryer.

In future washings, take care what you wash the dyed items with. Some excess dye (usually blue and sometimes red) will still discharge for several washings.

I have also used DAWN dish soap in place of the synthrapol with satisfactory results.

Here is the same process with just fabric yardage.

You can use just about any 100% cotton BUT watch out for antying that has permanent press treatments on it, as this will not hold the dye well and will result in pastel colors. This is great if that is what you are going for, however it is a big dissapointment if you were going for Bright vibrant colors.

So there you have it. Your first REAL dyetorial. There are several more folding and dying techniques to come and hopefully I will have the time to post them all over the next few weeks.

Enjoy!