The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Sweet Potato Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

Sweet Potato Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

Sweet Potato Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

My Entry in Bread Baking Day #04, Bread with Spice http://bakinghistory.wordpress.com/2007/10/18/bread-baking-day-04/

I’ve been wanting to make these ever since I saw Floyd’s beautiful sweet potato dinner rolls. There were only two left when I went to take a picture. These are a decadent treat, great for special occasions. Here’s the finished dough. Even this gloppy dough will make a nice windowpane if the gluten is well-developed.


Here’s me just starting to tease the windowpane from the dough. An earlier attempt obviously failed, but showed the dough was getting close.

I scraped the dough into a sort of ball, and left it to rise. It rose quickly, and was probably a bit overproofed in the next picture.

The dough was still quite soft, so I did a set of envelope folds to the dough, then cut it in half to make it a bit easier to work with.

Each half was rolled into a square, buttered, and topped with brown sugar, cinnamon and pecans.

The left roll was rolled a little loosely, which is why half of the rolls don’t make a pretty spiral pattern – I had to tuck in the loose dough as I placed them in the pan, resulting in an extra little loop. You can see it very plainly in the baked rolls.

Here are the rolls tucked up in their pans. I only baked one pan, the others went into the freezer for a holiday morning treat. The rolls might have risen higher if I hadn’t overproofed the first rise. I don’t know, but they were ready to go in the oven.

 

Sweet Potato Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

Time – based on my equipment, my kitchen – YMMV!

Soaker - 30 minutes to 24 hours

Final Dough – 30 minutes (including rest)

Primary Fermentation – 90 minutes

Forming Rolls and Final Fermentation – 3 hours

Baking – 35 minutes

 

Soaker

1¼ cup milk, scalded (heated to about 185F)

1 tablespoon lemon juice or vinegar

200 grams WW pastry flour

100 grams WWW flour

Final Dough

All of soaker

1 sweet potato, roasted, cooled, and peeled

4 tablespoons unsalted butter cut into pieces

2 eggs

1 1/2 tsp. Ground cardamom or ground seeds of 12 pods (optional)

1/8 teaspoon ground nutmeg

2 teaspoons salt

2 ½ teaspoons instant yeast

450 grams AP flour

Filling
8 ounces light brown sugar, about 1 cup packed
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons melted butter

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Icing

4 tablespoons soft butter (or cream cheese)
3 tablespoons milk
5 1/2 ounces powdered sugar, about 1 1/2 cups

Prepare Soaker Put flour into bowl of stand mixer. Stir the lemon juice into hot milk, and pour over flour. Mix well. Cover and let rest for 30 minutes to 24 hours. Refrigerate if soaking for more than a few hours. (A long soak will yield a softer roll.)

Prepare Dough and Filling Add all remaining ingredients to soaker, and mix with paddle until thoroughly combined. Let rest for 15 minutes. Knead with dough hook until smooth and satiny, with a nice windowpane. This will be a soft, gloppy dough. Cover dough and let rest until doubled..

Butter your baking dishes. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and divide in half. The dough will be extremely soft at this point, so do a couple of envelope folds (one each direction.) Divide the dough in half, and let rest a few minutes if you’ve folded. (Meanwhile, prepare the filling. Combine the brown sugar, cinnamon and salt in a medium bowl. Mix until well incorporated. Set aside until ready to use.)

Form Rolls Gently shape the dough into 2 squares. Roll each into a 12-inch square. Brush the dough with the melted butter, leaving 1/2-inch border along the top edge. Sprinkle the filling mixture over the dough, leaving a 3/4-inch border along the top edge. Sprinkle the pecans over the filling. Gently press the filling into the dough. Beginning with the edge nearest you, roll the dough into a tight cylinder. Firmly pinch the seam to seal and roll the cylinder seam side down. Very gently squeeze the cylinder to create even thickness. Using a serrated knife, slice the cylinder into 1 1/2-inch rolls; yielding about 16 rolls. Arrange rolls cut side down in the baking dish; cover tightly with plastic wrap and store in the refrigerator overnight or up to 16 hours.

Baking When rolls are ready to bake, place in a cold oven and set to 350. Bake until interior temperature reaches 190F, about 15 to 30 minutes. I checked in my toaster oven at 20 minutes, and they were already at 212F!

While the rolls are cooling slightly, make the icing by whisking the butter in the bowl of a stand mixer until creamy. Add the milk and whisk until combined. Sift in the powdered sugar, and whisk until smooth. Spread over the rolls and serve immediately.

For frozen rolls, place in buttered pan and let thaw in refrigerator overnight. Remove the rolls from the refrigerator and place on the middle rack in an oven that is turned off. Place a shallow pan on the rack below the rolls and fill 2/3-full of boiling water. Close the oven door and let the rolls rise until they look ready to bake. They should be more than slightly puffy; This should take 30 to 45 minutes.

Turn the oven on to 350F and bake until golden brown, or until the internal temperature reaches 190F on an instant-read thermometer, somewhere between 15 and 30 minutes.

NOTES

After the first few, I got a bit careless cutting the rolls. So I ended up with 22 instead of the 16 I expected. The two in the first picture were cut at about 1 inch instead of 1 ½ inch.

If you’re uncomfortable working with a sloppy dough, go ahead and add more flour during the mix. Be sure to keep the dough soft though, as too much flour will affect the rise and tenderness.

I omitted the cardamom, but only because I didn’t have any. A lack of powdered sugar meant no icing either.

I hope you enjoy these as much as we did! Even my sweet potato adverse husband loved them.

Comments

browndog's picture
browndog

Wow, the stars really do jump around in IE. I'll come back later in Firefox, KipperCat, and fix that.

Yum! Can I come over for breakfast? That soggy dough really came around. Thanks for the process pictures, they are always so helpful.

Funny, I made 'our' recipe last night and threw in a sweet potato instead of a white. It didn't get that blast of color Floyd's bread had, but it is still terrific.

 

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

My sweet potato rolls didn't have that bright color of Floyd's either.  They sort of look like it in the picture, but much of that is oven browning and lighting.

Do you know I've yet to try "our" recipe for a loaf of bread? I had just baked 3 loaves of a sourdough whole wheat when you showed that beautiful loaf.  Hopefully I'll get to it this week.

Doc Tracy's picture
Doc Tracy

I'd love to say I'll never make these again. I should say that. Or at least, I'll never make them for my house and only for gifts. OMG, these are soooo good! With the cream cheese frosting option. You have to make these!!!!! I subbed all WWW for the AP so it was all whole wheat, just love the whole wheat white flour. I used orange juice instead of lemon juice for sweetness and a tbsp of honey. Had to use soy for the milk. I also added raisins.

I'll bake another two pans to give away to family this weekend and take pictures. I'll admit these were my first rolls and they aren't so pretty but taste is unbelievable. Plus, they have to be healthier than cinnabons. I mean, whole wheat and sweet potato. Look at all those wonderful antioxidants and vitamins!!

Doc Tracy's picture
Doc Tracy

These were the most amazing cinnamon rolls I have ever tasted! My family went nuts over them. I highly recommend the Cream cheese frosting. I made them with whole wheat white flour, 100%/no AP at all.

Think of all those wonderful vitamins from the sweet potato and WW and all that wonderful taste loaded into these rolls. They may not be the prettiest rolls since I've never made rolls before but I loved the orange color and the taste to die for. Make sure you get an orange sweet potato for the darker color. The "white" sweet potatoes have very little color.

edh's picture
edh

Those look great! I've been meaning to try Floyd's rolls, now I guess I'll have to get 2 sweet potatoes and try both. My 10 year old just came into the room, looked over my shoulder, and wondered if we'd be having those for breakfast soon? I think he'll have to wait for Christmas morning. I've been getting kind of tired of the same old cinnamon or orange sticky rolls; these will make a great change!

No baking today (except for a couple of regular sourdough loaves for sandwiches); we're extracting the honey from our beehives today. The kitchen will be a sticky mess for the next 24 - 48 hours!

Thanks for the great write-up and pictures!

edh

browndog's picture
browndog

edh, two things: you make me chuckle--a couple of sourdough loaves is almost a non-event to you, apparently, but to me it's still a pendulum's swing away from victory or defeat, every time.

and how come your bees aren't frozen?

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

I hope you enjoy them Eric.  I can't imagine what the honey extraction process is like - except for the sticky part!

edh's picture
edh

Whoops, actually, I'm Elizabeth!

Our bees are frozen (well, not really, but they've gone to bed for the winter). We took the supers (boxes of honey frames beyond what they need to get through the winter) off the hives back in early October, but things were so busy that we just stacked them in a corner of the kitchen, planning to get to them "next weekend." Hmm, well, just a few weekends later...

We only have 2 hives (three some years), so extraction really is an over -the -weekend sort of thing, not like for real beekeepers. It is, nonetheless, very sticky. My husband usually runs the extractor, sort of a big noisy centrifuge, while I use a sort of heated knife to cut the caps off the honeycomb before putting it into the extractor. The trick, at this time of year, is that the room really needs to be about 80 F for the honey to flow. Given that it was 19 F outside, with 35 mph winds here today, that was kind of hard to pull off in our drafty old house!

Don't get me wrong; making 2 loaves of sourdough is still very fraught with adventure for me! In fact, I just took the bowl off the one loaf, and it looks like I overproofed it; kind of pancake-ish. I ended up with only one loaf because, about halfway through the extraction, we all needed something salty in the worst way, so I used half the dough to make Susan's grissini. Sort of. They were very tasty, with locally made sea salt, but kind of funny looking... edh

browndog's picture
browndog

We actually had a honey thread going for awhile. I think pictures of the honey process would be awesome, edh, if you ever feel inclined to grab a camera with sticky hands.

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

Sorry about the name, Elizabeth! Thanks for the info on the honey process. I'd also love to see pics of your honeying (if that's not a word, it should be!)  I couldn't find the bees thread w the google search, maybe a look at forum topics would have been quicker.

browndog's picture
browndog

Here it is, KipperCat. 

 I really like edh's plan for these rolls on Christmas morning. I so rarely make sweet rolls that I probably wouldn't have to buy the boys anything else, they'd be so delighted.

edh's picture
edh

A rose by any other name etc...

Not a problem; edh doesn't really tell you much about me, does it? :-)

OK, now I have to admit something embarrassing; I'm not exactly a luddite, but I am an uber-techno pathet. I whine and wring my hands when the computer freezes up. As a result, I've been totally intimidated at the prospect of trying to post pics. I'm so bad, I couldn't even email photos until my husband put Picasa on the computer, which pretty much does it for me. Without that, I wouldn't even know where to go to find the images. Pretty pathetic, I know.

Still, I really love seeing everyone else's pics, so I'd better learn to reciprocate. We've finished the actual extraction, but the kitchen is still all set up, so I'll get my husband to help me get some images before it all gets cleaned up (that's not a quick process!).

A question about the dough; I don't have a mixer. Is this just too wet to do by hand, or should I just go ahead and get messy? I haven't done anything with really slack doughs like the ciabatta I've read about on the site, but I don't have a particular aversion to mess either (as today's fun shows).

I'm starting to weaken. I may just have to try a test batch before Christmas. Wouldn't want to mess it up on the day itself...

edh

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

I don't know - it would be very different.  My experience is limited to either heavy machine kneading or simple folding.  I know that when doing a stretch and fold in wet dough, it's a lot easier to do with wet hands.  If you want to do it by hand, maybe this is your chance to learn how to fold dough! I would start with 4 or 5 good folds after the 15 minute rest, then 1 or 2 more every 30 minutes for awhile.  The problem is that I don't have enough experience to tell you how long to keep folding.  I've always just followed instructions! My guess would be until the gluten feels developed, i.e. makes a good windowpane. 

The dough would be easier to work by had if you added more flour, say 100 grams or so, from the beginning. 

I almost never make sweets either,  and now all of these rolls are calling to me from the freezer!

browndog's picture
browndog

edh (our elizabeth) and KipperCat, from the look of the photo this dough shouldn't be too incorrigible for hand work. It seems about the hydration of my pizza doughs lately.

The way I manage that is to first mix and knead the dough at a slightly lower hydration so as to maintain my sunny disposition. I find too that the litle rest period after mixing really helps. When the dough is where I want it I work in the remaining water--goopy but not miserable. And the folds will finish it off.

edh, I am almost (no, not almost) embarassed to admit to a certain segment of my acquaintance that I 'hang out' on line. It gives my own previously sterling Luddite creds a good smear.

All because of you guys, and The Fresh Loaf.

edh's picture
edh

I've been using the stretch and fold thing a lot, thanks to this site; it has drastically improved my efforts with whole grains (well, whole-er, not at 100% yet), but never with anything as wet as this looks. So many recipes are written for mixers, but the problem there is usually stiffness, so I do the mixing by kneading, and the gluten developement by soaking and stretch and fold.

I can tell I've got some fun ahead of me; clearly I'm going to have to try this sooner rather than later. You'd think with the amount of sugar circulating in my kitchen at this time of year (everyone gets homemade candies from us, not to mention the honey), I'd be able to resist, but this is something baked. I'm starting to obsess, I can tell. Uh oh...

But first, there are bowls of cappings to melt, an extractor to clean, and much honey to be filtered and bottled!

Thanks for the advice, I hope I get to apply it soon!

edh

browndog's picture
browndog

do us some pictures if you can, please, really. stretch your horizons as well.

or just send us some fudge.

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

Fudge, oh, yes! 

I'm glad you mentioned developing the dough without all the water first, then adding it in after.  That way you can maintain the original balance of the recipe (not that I'm convinced that balance is so important in this case!)

Ramona's picture
Ramona

Today, I am making cinnamon rolls with cream cheese and a date sugar crumble.  I don't use sugar, so I thought the cream cheese would make up for the lacking of sugar glaze on top. 

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

I like date sugar.  If I remember, the taste is sort of like an earthier brown sugar.

dstroy's picture
dstroy

Wow.  Those look delicious!

manuela's picture
manuela

Thank you KipperKat for participating to bbd #04!

manuela's picture
manuela

Hi KipperKat

the roundup for bbd#04 is on line, thanks for your entry!!

http://bakinghistory.wordpress.com/2007/12/04/bbd-04-roundup/

susanfnp's picture
susanfnp

These rolls look great! How big was your sweet potato?

Susanfnp

http://www.wildyeastblog.com

KipperCat's picture
KipperCat

Thank you Susan. I sort of wish I'd weighed the sweet potato! It was about 7" long, but not real big around. I'm pretty sure the recipe would accept a larger one. I'll have to get a couple more just to eat. I'd forgotten how much I liked baked sweet potatoes.

tatter's picture
tatter

Your rolls look great, KipperCat! :D