We had finally decided that our local company’s frozen cinnamon rolls—which you defrost, let rise, and bake—were just as good as homemade when our beloved neighbor Lia brought us a plate of hers and irrevocably changed our minds. Everything Lia makes has a little extra cache for us because she is a very elegant woman. She lived in the Netherlands until after World War II, when she was 11 years old and the country was having such trouble recovering from the war that her family emigrated to Utah, where her aunts and uncle lived. Lia was one of the first women to visit us in our current house; she’s been visiting the inhabitants of this house for over thirty-five years.

We have played with the filling, icing, and instructions, but we hope Lia would still like the results. If there’s something about the rolls that you want to change, it will surely be an innovation introduced by us and not reflective of the original. For the interior, we prefer a mix of dark brown sugar and moderate cinnamon, and we like to make the glaze with a heavy dose of cream cheese.

If you don’t have leftover mashed potatoes on hand, peel and cut into 5 or 6 chunks 1 large or two medium russet potatoes. Bring them to a boil in salted water, boil for 25 minutes, then drain and mash them and you’ll be ready to go. It’s nice to do this a day ahead, both to keep the rolls from feeling like too much work and to get the potatoes cold— the recipe instructions explain why that matters.

CINNAMON ROLLS
Makes four to five dozen

• 1/2 cup shortening

• 1/4 cup butter

• 3 cups milk (whichever kind you have in your fridge)

• 1 1/2 cups mashed potatoes

• 2 1/2 tablespoons yeast (1/2 tablespoon equals 1 1/2 teaspoons)

• 3/4 cup warm water

• 3 eggs, at room temperature and slightly beaten

• 1 1/2 cups sugar

• 1 1/2 tablespoons table salt

• 11 cups flour (1/2 whole wheat pastry flour, if you have it; 1/2 bread or all-purpose flour)

  Filling

• 1 3/4 cups dark brown sugar

• 5 teaspoons cinnamon

• 1/2 cup butter, melted

  
  

  Icing

• 1 1/2 blocks cream cheese, at room temperature

• 1/2 cup milk

• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla

• generous pinch of table salt

  
  

  Put the 1/4 cup butter and shortening in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat. When they are nearly melted, add the milk and heat them together until they almost simmer—tiny bubbles will appear and pop around the edges of the pan. Remove from the heat and let cool while you measure the yeast and stir it into warm water in a small bowl.

  The hot butter liquid can continue to cool as you measure six cups of flour, sugar, and salt into a large bowl. Crack the eggs into the liquid measuring cup that you used to measure the milk, then stir them with a fork until the whites and yolks are well blended. 

  This is a very forgiving recipe, but here is a moment where it’s possible to mess it up. If the milk mixture and mashed potatoes are still too hot, they will harm the yeast and the rolls won’t rise. Yeast cannot tolerate direct contact with liquid that is 120 degrees or higher. If your liquid is still really hot and your potatoes are, too, you should go read a book for thirty minutes, or at least put them both outside in the cold for ten minutes. A little hint is to mix the milk mixture with the eggs, sugar, salt, mashed potatoes, and 6 cups  of the flour, then test the temperature before adding any yeast. Often by the time all those things are added, the dough temperature will be safe for the yeast.  Add the yeast and a few more cups of flour and knead in the mixer until smooth and well blended.  Slowly add most of the remaining flour to make a soft dough. You’ll want the dough to be the tiniest bit tacky, but not sticky, if you can. So you might not need all of the flour. Knead in the mixer for 8 more minutes.

  Cover the dough and allow it to rise until it almost doubles in size. People always say to cover yeasted doughs with towels, but we think that dries them out. We have some silicone lids we like to use, or sometimes we just put a plate over the top of the bowl (but it needs to be a heavy one that won’t break if the dough rises so much that it pushes it away while you aren’t watching). It takes our dough about 90 minutes to rise. We know it’s ready when we push into it gently with a finger and the fingerprint doesn’t bounce all the way back. Divide dough in thirds and roll each third, one at a time, into a rectangle 1/2 inch thick. Spread the rectangle with melted butter, then sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Roll it up away from you, and cut it into 1" slices.

  Years ago, we learned to heed the Cooks’ Illustrated tip to make the slices with dental floss (not the minty kind). The floss exerts even pressure on all size of the roll, so it doesn’t get flattened like it can with a knife. Also, the floss doesn’t get weighed down with butter and brown sugar, so you don’t have to keep cleaning it off as you might with a knife. Place the slices on a cookie sheet and cover. Let them rise until they almost double, or until they take on the puffiness level that looks right to you. This takes about forty five minutes in our kitchen. Bake at 350 degrees until just a few of them barely start to acquire a light brown color—18 to 20 minutes. Decorate with our cream cheese icing, or make a simple glaze from powdered sugar and milk.

At Christmas time, instead of using dental floss to cut rolls, we take the two ends of the rolled up dough and stick them together. Then we use scissors to cut through most-but-not-all of the rolled up dough, about an inch apart. After twisting the rolls a bit away from their cuts, we let them rise for 45 minutes, then bake for 22 to 28 minutes at 350 degrees, until some of the top has turned light golden brown. If you want to check with a thermometer, aim for 185 degrees. The recipe makes three wreaths, like the one below. They are in the freezer now, wrapped thoroughly in tinfoil, and we will take them out and glaze them on Christmas Eve. Then we take two and give them away to other families in the neighborhood. After opening our stockings on Christmas morning, we warm our wreath in a 325 degree oven while we make hot chocolate, scrambled eggs, and bacon to eat with sliced oranges. Even when the girls were little , Christmas breakfast was one of their favorite parts of the holiday.