These are a Christmas morning tradition in my family, probably because (in my opinion) they are too complicated to do too often. For once a year, though, they are totally perfect. To make the dough:
1 package or 2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
1 teaspoon salt
1 egg
1/4 cups sugar
2 tablespoons soft butter
3 to 3 1/2 cups flour
Dissolve yeast in warm water. Stir in sugar, salt, butter, egg and 2 cups of flour. Beat with the dough hook on your mixer or with a wooden spoon until smooth. Work in enough remaining flour to make the dough easy to handle. Place in a greased bowl (I used coconut oil for the greasing) then flip over the dough so the greased side is up, cover the bowl tightly and put it in a warm place to let it rise (or store in the fridge for up to 4 days, where it will rise very slowly). This is what my dough looked like after rising for an hour or two. It almost doubled in size:
When your dough is almost done rising, combine:
2/3 cups melted butter
1 cup packed brown sugar
2 tablespoons corn syrup (I used this)
1 1/3 cups pecan halves
Once combined, spread mixture evenly over the bottom of a 13×9 pan. Then roll out your newly risen dough on a floury surface (I used my countertop) into a rectangle roughly 15 inches by 9 inches.
Spread the dough with melted butter and sprinkle on cinnamon sugar (I combined 1/2 cups white sugar and 2 tablespoons cinnamon and used it all). Then start to roll up your rectangle:
Once you’ve gotten your dough completely rolled up, cut it into 15 one inch rolls (in the photo on the left, you can see where I used a knife to mark the dough roll before I cut it) and place them in three rows of five in your pecan prepared pan:
After this step, I stored the rolls in the fridge over night, but I’m pretty sure you could also put them in the freezer or leave them in the fridge for a few days. About an hour and a half before you need them, put them in a warmish (~150-200 degrees Fahrenheit) oven for about an hour, until they roughly double in size and look like this:
Then bake them 25-30 minutes at 375 degrees Fahrenheit until they are golden brown on top (the photo on the left below). The final step is to put a tray or cookie sheet face down on top of the rolls and then turn the whole thing upside down, so that the rolls fall out of the pan you cooked them in with the yummy caramel pecan goo on top (the photo on the right below).
What are some of your holiday food traditions?
Inviting Joy 