Dinner Rolls

My first time making homemade dinner rolls. They turned out amazing. I didn't get the dough to form smooth dough balls, which is why the tops look somewhat like biscuits, but they taste like perfect dinner rolls. They are huge and fluffy and oh so filling! I also make homemade honey butter. Apparently it was a Texas Roadhouse recipe. Yum. Yum.I got the recipe from Our Best Bites

Ingredients: 

2 cups whole milk (I used 2%)

1/2 cup +1Tbsp sugar divided

1/3 cup (5 1/3Tbsp.) butter  

2 tsp. Kosher salt

2 pkgs. active dry yeast (or 4 1/2 tsp.), preferably bread machine yeast
2/3 c. warm (105-115-degree) water
8-9 c. all-purpose flour
3 beaten eggs

Directions: 

1. Combine milk, 1/2 c. sugar, butter, and salt in a medium saucepan. Heat over medium heat until butter melts. Remove from heat. Allow to cool to lukewarm. I usually rub some ice cubes along the sides of the pan or pop the entire pan in a sink full of ice cubes to cool the mixture down because this step can take forever. This step is really important because if the mixture is too hot, it will kill the yeast.
2. While the milk mixture is cooling, dissolve the yeast and 1 Tbsp. sugar in warm water. Let stand about 10 minutes.
3. In a large mixing bowl, combine 3 c. flour and milk mixture. Beat on low for 30 seconds, scraping sides of bowl constantly. Add yeast mixture and beat on high for 3 minutes.
Add beaten eggs.
4. Stir in as much remaining flour as needed to make a soft dough. This dough should be very soft–it will be coming away from the sides of the bowl, but it will still stick to your finger when you touch it. Don’t worry, it will firm up during the rising process. Part of what makes these rolls so good is that they’re so soft and light; if you add too much flour, they will be heavy and dense. Place the bowl in a warm place and cover with a clean towel; allow to rise 1 hour.
5. Punch down dough. Lightly flour your work surface and turn dough out onto surface. Divide in half.
Spray 2 9×13 glass pans with cooking spray. Roll first portion of dough into a rectangle and then cut it into 12 equal-sized pieces. I like to use a pizza cutter because it has a blade on each side, so it cuts right through dough without sticking to the blade. This dough should be very easy to work with, almost like playdough. Shape each piece into a ball and place in prepared pan. Repeat with remaining dough in the second pan.
6. Cover with a clean cloth and allow to rise in a warm place for about 30 minutes. When dough has about 15-20 minutes to go (depending on your oven), preheat oven to 375.
7. Bake for 15-18 minutes or until tops are golden brown. When done, remove from oven. Rub a stick of cold butter over the tops of the rolls. And then, take one right out of the pan and eat it, without burning your tongue of course. 




Honey Butter:
 2 sticks of butter (room temperature)
1 cup of powdered sugar
1 cup of honey
2 teaspoons of cinnamon

 Mix it all together until it’s the consistency you want and it’s ready.Easy right?

Chocolate Brownie Trifle

 

First time making a trifle. Lets just say, it tasted pretty darn good for a first try. I know it doesn't look quite as good as it tastes, I'll have to work on the presentation. 

Here is the recipe: 

Ingredients:

1 box chocolate pudding

toffee bits

brownies

whipping cream

caramel sauce

How to layer it:

Place crumbly brownies at the bottom of the trifle dish.  

Then drizzle caramel on top. 

Next goes whipping cream.

Then toffee bits

On top of that, chocolate pudding

Then you repeat your layers, and you top it off with whipping cream and toffee bits.

One thing I would recommend is waiting until the brownies and chocolate pudding are cooled. I put the first layer of brownies and chocolate pudding in warm, and it melted the whipping cream, which made it hard for the layers to stay together. When putting the layers in, try to push everything out to the side to get the pretty trifle look. Here is the link to a good picture of this Chocolate Trifle

We took this dish over to a friend's house last night and below is my husband skateboarding it over there. He is brave. It made it to and from safely, thank goodness.

Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Homemade vanilla ice cream was a hit. I bought all the ingredients and toppings and threw a homemade ice cream party. Needless to say, everyone enjoyed making their homemade ice cream. For a while I thought our neighbors were going to complain from the noise of 10 people shaking bags full of ice at the same time.

Ingredients: 

1 cup half and half

2 Tbsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions: 

Place all ingredients in a small sandwich zip lock bag. Then place the small zip lock bag in a larger zip lock bag full of ice and rock salt. Zip up the larger bag and shake about 5-10 minutes until the ice cream inside the smaller bag freezes. When its frozen, run cold water over the smaller zip lock bag to make sure there is no salt in your ice cream. (I got a bite of salt in mine and its really gross.) Then pour the ice cream in a bowl and top with whatever you'd like. I bought  miniature candy bars, hot fudge, caramel and chocolate syrup. 

Next time I make this I am going to use mint extract instead of vanilla extract. I'll let you know how my homemade mint ice cream turns out.

Tyrone and Mark showing how yummy their ice cream is.