Ninety four degrees here in Portland? Wherever you are? Close your eyes and imagine a tiny, two-bedroom, 1700 square foot house on Sandhurst Drive, St. Paul, MN. You took the battery out of the car last night and are keeping it alive in the kitchen so you or your spouse/friend/sig other can go to work this morning. After you shovel the driveway. Don't worry about school, the kids are still too young to go to school, so you'll be cycling them into and out of their snow-suits, boots, mittens, hats, scarves all day. Don't worry about tonight's dinner, you have plenty of jello for the salad, cream of mushroom soup and that nice pound of hamburger in the refrig for the entree, or for what is called hot dish, here in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes.
There. Feeling better?
A group of ex-pats from the Mid-west (which is meant to include North Dakota), friends of ours here in sunny Portland, holds, on occasion, a party nostalgically celebrating food of memory from those frozen landscapes. Maybe another time I'll give you the recipe for Mary Crane's Pineapple/Orange Salad (salad in MN is broadly defined), or Lynn Gardner's Cranberry Pudding, but for for today, we'll make do with Sandhurst Rolls. The provenance of this recipe is uncertain, but I believe it originated from a neighbor behind our house up on County Road B (well, what county needed more than 26 roads, and there was the alphabet right handy).
It's a bit of a project, and definitely not healthy, but I guess I didn't worry about that while feeding my kids back in the day. I promise these rolls are delicious, just be sure to make them when you can give most of them away:
SANDHURST ROLLS
1 pkg. dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup cold butter
1/2 cup cold Crisco (I warned you! You can sub other veg. shortening if you can find it)
2 eggs
1/2 cup sour cream
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cups sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
Proof yeast in water. Combine flour and salt. Cut butter and Crisco into flour mix. Add slightly beaten eggs, sour cream, vanilla, and yeast mixture, and stir to blend thouroughly. Chill at least 2 hours.
Pour 2 Tbs. vanilla over sugar in bowl. With fingers, incorporate vanilla into all sugar granules until they are uniformly blended. (Just do it) With dinner knife, cut the vanilla sugar into 6ths, as if you were cutting up a pie.
Divide dough in half, and proceed as follows: Scoop out one of the 6ths of sugar and place onto rolling surface (counter, board, whatever), smoothing it into the approximate size of your lump of dough. Press dough into sugar, and turn over to press other side into the sugar. With rolling pin, roll the dough into a narrow oblong.
Now scoop out a second 6th of sugar. Smooth it onto the top of your oblong, and onto the rolling surface. (The sugar will act as flour if you were rolling out pie crust. Get it?) Fold the oblong into thirds, then roll again into the narrow oblong.
Do this folding and rolling one more time. Each time is creating layers of the scented sugar.
Now cut the oblong in widths, each slice about 1/2 wide. You'll have 10-12 pieces, 3-4 inches long and 1/2 inch wide. Tuck this piece into a little shape, like part of a bow or a snail and place on baking tray.
Repeat with second half of dough and remaining 3 6ths of sugar.
Bake at 375 degrees for 15 - 20 minutes, watching closely. If your oven tends to burn the bottoms of cookies, be careful, the sugar will definitely burn if given a chance. If you have a rimmed baking sheet, you can place the cookie sheet on top of the rimmed sheet in the oven, creating a buffer from the bottom element of your oven.
If you want these for Sunday breakfast, instead of donuts, for example, you can make up the dough Saturday night and leave in the refrig overnight, covered with plastic wrap, of course. Roll and bake in the morning. Remember, only 3 1/2 more months until that white Christmas, which, if you lived in Minnesota instead of just being born there, is a promise and a guarantee. Meanwhile, enjoy the sunshine!
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