Texas Roadhouse Rolls

Awhile back we went to Texas Roadhouse for dinner with our family. I wasn't a huge fan of their food, but they served these amazing rolls. I searched around on the internet and found this amazing recipe. I can't tell you if they are exactly like the restaurant because I never went back, but they are very delicious.

Happy Baking

TEXAS ROAD HOUSE SWEET YEAST ROLLS

1/2 sol. oz. cake of yeast or 1 pkg. active dry yeast (2 1/4 t)

1/2 cup warm water

2 cups milk- scalded and cooled to lukewarm

3 tablespoons of melted butter - cooled

1/2 cup sugar

8 cups all purpose flour

2 whole eggs

2 tsp. Salt

Soften yeast in warm water with a teaspoon of sugar. Add yeast, milk, sugar and enough flour (about 2 ½ cup) to make a medium batter. Beat thoroughly. Let stand until light and foamy.

Add melted butter, eggs and salt. Beat well. Add enough flour to form soft dough. Sprinkle small amount of flour on counter and let dough rest.

Meanwhile, clean and dry bowl; grease clean surface of bow. Knead dough until smooth and satiny. Put in greased bowl; turn over to grease top. Cover; let rise in warm place until double in bulk.

Punch down. Turn out on floured board. Divide into portions for shaping; let rest 10 minutes.

Shape dough into desired forms. Place on greased baking sheets. Let rise until doubled.

Bake at 350 degrees F for 10-15 minutes (until golden brown). Baste immediately with butter. Serve with honey butter.

Yield: 5 to 6 dozen (depending on the size - I made mine kind of big and got about 3 dozen)

Cinnamon-Honey Butter

1 c butter softened

1/2 c honey

1 tsp cinnamon (or more to taste)

Whip butter, add honey. Whip until light and fluffy. Add cinnamon.

Photos:

Dough Rising

Completed Dough

Punching Down Dough

I created a proofing box so they would rise faster

Rolls

some knotted rolls for fun

finished rolls!

Absolutely delicious

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes

Strawberry Shortcake Cupcakes!

These were amazing, I made vanilla cupcakes and placed a few strawberries in the center. After the cupcakes cooled, I topped them with whipped cream. They were sooo yummy!

Christmas Cooking Part 1 Mastering the Croissant

I absolutely love croissants. I have mastered the actual recipe and am now working on mastering variations of the recipe. Today, I made regular croissants, pain au chocolat, and pain aux amandes. For Pain au Chocolats, I recommend using bittersweet chocolates or chocolate sticks (you can find them a places like kingarthurflour.com). For the Pain aux Amandes, I found a can of almond paste made by solo at Harmon's Grocery Store. It worked so much better than the tubes of almond paste. It had more moisture and the flavor was incredible. Happy Baking!

Croissant

Pain au Chocolat

Pain aux Amandes

Proofing

Proofing: A step in creating yeast breads and baked goods, during which the yeast is allowed to leaven the dough.

When making doughs, they need time to proof. Professional baking shops have a proofer that looks kind of like an oven. It keeps a constant temperature and a specific percentage of humidity (depending upon the type of dough). You can create the same type of environment in your oven by heating the oven to the lowest degree allowed on your oven (mine is 170F). Turn off the oven and open the door slightly to get it to cool to between 75 & 85 degrees. Place a low pan with boiling water in the bottom rack of the oven. This will create the humidity needed so that you don't need to use saran wrap. Keep an eye on your dough while it rises until it reaches the size you need.

When proofing doughs that are high in butter, if the oven is too hot the butter will leak out.

100% Homemade Beef Stroganoff

My mom has made beef stroganoff my entire life. I love it. When I moved into my apartment, I didn't have the same cookbooks as her and was sadly disappointed by many of the stroganoff recipes I found. Many of the recipes are more...semi-homemade calling for cream of mushroom soup, onion soup, or onion soup mix. I prefer the full home made kind. It can be served over rice or egg noodles, I prefer rice. This is a dinner that can be ready in 30 minutes or an hour depending on when you want to serve. I am horrible with measuring...I don't actually measure anything with this recipe so if you feel like maybe 1/4c ketchup is too much, just put in a squirt or so. If you don't want to use 1 cup of sour cream, just use a couple of spoon fulls. It's all about finding the recipe and taste you like the best. It's not a science, these pieces all work well together no matter what. I like my stroganoff to be thick, while my mom likes hers a bit thinner. To get your stroganoff to be thick, add a little more flour and let it simmer to thicken.

Beef Stroganoff
(for 2 with a days worth of leftovers)

1 sirloin steak cut into strips or cubed (you can also use stew meat or ground beef)
4 Tablespoons Butter
1 can mushrooms (or 4 oz cut up mushrooms)
Worcestershire sauce for taste (about a tablespoon)
Garlic, salt, & pepper to taste
1 can beef broth
1/2 onion minced
2 Tablespoons flour
1 c sour cream

Saute the mushrooms in 1 Tablespoon of butter. Remove mushrooms. In the same pan, brown steak with the butter. When the steak is brown on the outside, season with salt, pepper, garlic, and worchestershire sauce.

Add 2/3 of the beef broth, onion, and ketchup. Cover and simmer 15 minutes or until the beef is tender. Blend the reserved broth an meat and add to beef. The mixture will begin to thicken. Add mushrooms and heat to boiling stir for about 1 minutes. Add sour cream and heat through.

Serve over rice or egg noodles.

Caramel Coating

When I was cooking for Halloween, I came across an excellent recipe for a mix of treats covered in caramel. This would be a fabulous recipe for Christmas if you are doing neighborhood gifts, or if you just like to make sweet treats for the Holidays. For my Halloween recipe, I omitted the peanuts and added plain M&Ms instead of candy pumpkins.



Caramel Coating

1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup light brown syrup
1/4 cup butter, cubed
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

In a large saucepan combine the brown sugar, corn syrup, and butter; bring to a rolling boil. Boil for 6 minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat; quickly stir in vanilla and baking soda until mixture is light and foamy. Immediately pour over chosen snack mix and toss to coat. Bake, uncovered, at 250 degrees for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes. Cool completely before eating.

The Snack Mixture for Halloween was

3 quarts popped popcorn
4 cups Cheerios
4 cups Chex
2 cups salted peanuts
1 package (16oz) candy pumpkins

Mix all ingredients together, except candy pumpkins. Prepare caramel coating and follow the directions. After the mixture has been baked, add candy pumpkins.

Pastry

I have been trying out the art of pastry which can be fairly difficult depending on what you are making. There are six types of pastries I am going to focus on:

Shortcrust/Sweetcrust: tart shells

Phyllo: Greek/Middle Eastern, made for things like baklava

Flaky: pie crusts

Puff: croissants, cheese straws, hor'devours, danishes, beef wellingtons, and the list goes on

Choux: French, used for cream puffs, eclairs, and so forth

I have mastered the puff pastry and flaky pastry. Today I wanted to try out the choux pastry. The first recipe I used (from Williams-Sonoma Baking cook book) wasn't that fabulous and was a little runny for me. Then I found another one and was able to make these beautiful little cream puffs. I filled them with whipped cream and will try and find a custard recipe later. I didn't make any eclairs, just puffs for today, but they came out beautifully.