Great Granny's Rolls

Yesterday's reminiscing about the fifties caused another memory to surface after reading a recipe in one of my cake books.  Coffeecake, where have you gone?  I don't mean the circular yeast dough stuffed with almond paste that you find in a bakery and god knows where you can find a bakery anymore, but the one that every relative in my circle had several clippings for, tucked inside the cover of the Betty Crocker cookbook.

Quick Coffeecake used baking powder as leavening to react with a liquid catalyst (didn't know you were doing chemistry, didja?).  Baking powder itself has Cream of Tartar, Baking soda, and Calcium Acid Phosphate.  Please read the label, as some still use Sodium Aluminum Sulphate and aluminum is just not good for people to ingest.  Increased levels have been found in brains of Alzheimer's patients.  Stick with the calcium which may not rise as high by a quarter of an inch, but to me, that's worth a little memory.  Commercial, pre-made mixes usually go for looks, so they often contain aluminum, like Bisquick.  End of rant.

My mom had maybe six different recipes for Quick Coffeecake snipped from newspaper, as it was one of the conveniences for the modern housewife of the era.  Have the girls over, serve a fresh from the oven cake you whipped up just before they arrive in their modern slacks with their Toni perms.  No time at all.  There was strudel on top, with a layer running through the middle, all cinnamon, butter and  brown sugar.  The cake part itself was meant not to be too sweet, that was the job of the crumbles on top.  Nuts made it better, in my opinion.  Fruit wasn't really available out of season, so no blueberries and pineapple only appeared as rings on top of an upside down cake.  Really, it was a plain, friendly cake.

It wasn't until later that I ran into a yeast-based coffeecake produced by the grandmother of the family I had married into.  Great Granny, who was hip before the word existed, would start this sometimes the night before for morning rolls, or midday for dinner.  The batter was the same, considered quick because there was no kneading or second rising in the bowl.  Frosting on top designated breakfast rolls, just butter for supper.  The whole batter plopped into the pan with strudel made coffecake.  Here is her recipe:


Great Granny’s Rolls                        350 degrees  8" square pan, buttered

1 cup milk
3 tb. butter
2 tb. sugar
½ tsp salt
1½ packages of yeast
¼ cup lukewarm H2O
1 beaten egg
3 – 3 ½ cups flour

Scald the milk and butter, add sugar and salt.  COOL or you will kill the yeast.  Dissolve the yeast in the warm water, add to milk.  Add in the beaten egg, then the flour, let rise double once.  Shape into balls of dough (walnut size), put into greased pan, brush with butter.  Bake 20 minutes till brown.  Great Granny would add a confectioner’s sugar icing for morning rolls.  You can start this, shape it and put in fridge till morning then bake.

Because there isn't any kneading, the gluten doesn't develop other than in the one rising so don't expect light and fluffy.  The item we are talking here is a coarsely grained, stalwart roll that will allow you to endure.  A durable Guten Tag.  Get going.  Meet the day.  

Now we are consigned to not so many carbs, so the coffeecake is vanishing like everything else.  You look at a slice and apologize to your neighbor for having one.   Once in a while is okay, I think this from-scratch recipe will do less harm than a bowl of Trix, which appears in the school breakfast program at least three times a week.  Trix is a sugar-sweetened cereal that now comes in five freakish colors, not the three I grew up with.  Blue.  Purple.  Green. Yellow. Red.  Fun.  Really kids, if colored breakfast cereal is the most fun you get in the day, we need to talk.

It is early and there are things to do.  Post office is closed today, rats.  I shall find something to get into which may include making a batch of rolls, it has been a long time and I can use a good memory.  Talk to you soon.  Go make something.