time to roll

It's pretty cool to see how God puts different things on our hearts and different abilities in our hands. I, for one, very much dislike hooking up new tech equipment. Thankfully, my husband quite enjoys it (most of the time). Since we had to replace our computer recently, that was a big relief to me!


I can't make a pie crust to save my life, but I don't really care for pie crust anyway. I've decided to let that one go- except that I can make a mean graham cracker crust or cheesecake crust (those are truly essential, after all).

Some folks do not go near yeast baking. I've always enjoyed it, even back in 4-H and in Mom's kitchen smelling all the wonderful dough rising and baking in the farm kitchen. The week before our wedding, I went to my Mother-in-law to learn her farmer's market cinnamon roll recipe. I will never forget walking through that process with her, seeing what ease she moved through each batch and how she had to tell me everything from memory while I took notes down in a notebook. "Add one more cup, then another cup..." and the whole assembly line with at least 4 large Tupp_erware bowls going.

The recipe makes very light and fluffy rolls, and a little goes a long way. The rolls rise overnight after several sessions of knocking it down in the afternoon. I'll never forget, "You'll need to get up at about 3:30 am to bake these", she told me as I carted my little batch home. WOW. That's what you call 'rising while it's still night to give food to your family' Proverbs 31 kinda moves.

Funny how I still typically follow that schedule when I make them. There is a reason for that 3:30 baking time, after all! We want our rolls as fresh as possible, and we also can only fit 4 round pans in the oven at a time (or 1 large sheet pan).

Today I got up at 3am since I had 4 recipes of rolls to make for our Goodies for Grandparents breakfast at school. This is my 2nd year of doing large baking projects for theses PTO school breakfasts, and I'm hoping to get it down to a science. ☺

I also adopted my own Momma's kitchen saavy and mixed all my icing for large plastic baggies that could be squeezed on the rolls after I brought them to school. NOT a fan of getting gooey sugar all over the car and my arms and stuck to the plastic wrap on the rolls, so it seems that putting the icing on after getting to school works best. I also baked 4 coffee cakes yesterday, and I'll use some of the icing on those when I cut them at school.

Sis came along with me this morning to help serve. I'm so proud of her for getting up at 5:30 to ride along and help. (5:30 is a BIG jump for her lately as an almost-teenager who needs LOTS of sleep!)

It was a relief that we had close to 50 leftover rolls. As most of you know, it's VERY frustrating to run out of stuff like this since buying premade baked goods cost at least an arm, if not the leg also. Those extra rolls are resting nicely in the teacher's lounge and I have 2 unfrosted packs for my deep freeze to pull out another day!

Ok- now I need a nap.