Aunt Judie's Christmas Buellas

We haven't posted in a long time, as we have pretty much blogged about the whole cookbook now (I think there are a couple outstanding recipes still...), so we decided to blog about new recipes on our main page.  Here is one that didn't make it to the cookbook, but it is an old Johnson family tradition from David's Swedish Aunt Judie.  Buellas are basically soft sweet rolls with an almond glaze. These are baked at all family holidays and get-togethers. They are served for breakfast, dessert, afternoon tea, or evening coffee--pretty much anytime!

Buellas

1 can evaporated milk
1 cup water
1 stick butter
3 eggs
2 packages instant yeast
3/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
8 cups all-purpose flour
4 Tablespoons softened butter
Glaze: powdered sugar, milk, almond extract

1. Heat milk, water and butter in a saucepan till very warm. Beat the eggs in a large bowl by hand, or in a standing mixer. Add warm milk mixture and beat to combine.

2. Add yeast, sugar, salt, and 2 cups of the flour. Beat well.

3. Mix in enough of the remaining flour till a soft dough is formed. Knead by hand or machine briefly. (This dough does not require a lot of kneading.) Place dough in a large, greased bowl, cover, and allow to rise till double, about 45 minutes to an hour.

4. On a floured counter-top, roll 1/2 the dough at a time, (Cover the remaining dough so that it does not dry out.) to 1/2-inch thickness--about a 12x15-inch rectangle. Spread with 1/2 of the softened butter.

5. Fold dough toward the center into thirds--like this:

Now cut 1/2-inch strips off of folded dough, cutting 3 to 6 strips at a time.  I like to use a cake icing spreading spatula to do this.

Now lay 2 strips into a cross--use plenty of flour on your surface to keep the dough from sticking.

 Add a third strip and weave it in like this:

Now tuck in all your ends to the bottom, to make a rosette.

6. You have made a buella! Place your rolls on a baking sheet about 2 inches apart.

Cover with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with cooking spray (to keep it from sticking to the rolls.) Allow to rise in a warm place till doubled--about 1 hour or so--depending on how warm your kitchen is.

7. Bake buellas one pan at a time at 375 degrees for 15 to 20 minuets. They should be just barely touched with a bit of golden on top and bottom--do not get them very brown--they are much more delicious when only very lightly browned! Sorry that I do not have a picture of a baked buella to show you--they were eaten to fast I suppose!

8. Just before serving,(either from the oven, or heated up the next day, or frozen, thawed and heated) give the rolls a light glaze of powdered sugar mixed with milk and a small amount of almond extract. I am sorry, that I don't have an exact recipe for the glaze--just mix in enough milk or powdered sugar till the consistency is right for drizzling, and then add a bit of almond flavoring.( Go lightly with the almond extract, as it is a strong flavoring.)  These are so very good. Merry Christmas! You must make these for the holidays! ~Janice

Italian Breadsticks ~ page 282

Last summer I posted this recipe, but I had made it into pizza rolls with cheese and pepperoni. Here are the breadsticks as they are written. They rise very quickly, so it doesn't take all afternoon to make them. They are much better than Olive Garden's breadsticks I think. The recipe says to knead in as much of the flour as you can, but don't add it all in. You still want a soft ball of dough. The reason the recipe doesn't just give an exact amount is just because there are so many little variables...from the kind of flour you use to your weather. Just add what you need to to make a soft non sticky ball and you will be fine. Of the 2 cups I think I added 1 3/4 cup of flour.
Above it the dough rising in the warm but OFF oven...then I added a dish of boiling water beside it to keep it warm in there...I needed it to rise even faster. I was in a hurry had hungry kids and husband waiting!
Below is the finished product...so YUMMY! I had leftover black Bean Soup from the other night so dolled it up by adding rotisserie chicken and came out with a great meal that was very healthy!

Cream Cheese Braids page ~ 230

This recipe makes 4 loaves...they aren't really braids, not sure why I didn't change that title. They are rolled up jelly roll style and "scored" with a knife. They freeze so well, that there is no reason to not freeze them.
Above you will see how lumpy the dough is, you don't have to kneed it like most bread recipes, you just mix it up then plop in a bowl overnight. Below is the dough rolled out getting its filling spread on top.
Here they are as they are rising...
And here is a picture to show how I like to cut them for serving...just a one inch slice is perfect for serving. One loaf serves about 8- 10 if you do skinny slices. --Enjoy ..Carissa

Aunt Judie's Swedish Limpa Bread ~ page 274

My job for Christmas is the traditional Swedish Limpa bread... and here is the most interest the boys have ever shown in the kitchen:

A while back I tried to make the full recipe in my mixer, had a horrible experience and ended up with way too much bad limpa. This time I halved the recipe and made it twice. Both batches turned out great. Here is the second rise:

I actually ran low on regular flour for the second batch and used bread flour which I think turned out a bit fluffier but the difference was slight. I wouldn't go out of my way to use the bread flour again. And here is my finished limpa bread, with the hot oven open, pouring out heat to keep me toasty on one of the colder nights we had!

Cranberry Bread ~ page 313

I baked this bread for Julia last week, a few days after her baby boy was born. It felt like celebration bread with all its cheerfulness! I have had this recipe since my own kids were little. In fact, I got it from a child's magazine with recipes to cook with your mom! Back in those days, I did not have a food processor to chop my cranberries, so I meticulously cut them in quarters one cranberry at a time!

I used frozen cranberries in my food processor this time--and don't tell anyone, but these frozen berries are 3 years old! I am serious. I bought a really huge bag at Sams 3 years ago...and I have not used it up! They still taste as good as ever.

I mix the chopped berries in with the dry ingredients. This cuts down on the final stirring after the wet ingredients are added.

The raw batter looks pink, but don't worry, it bakes up fine.

It is a little tricky to decide if the loaf is done--check the center with a toothpick. I took my loaf out, then 5 minutes later decided it should go back in for another 5 minutes. No harm done.

After a few minutes to cool,  I turn the cranberry bread out onto a rack.

One thing nice about this bread, is that it is low in fat--only 2 tablespoons of butter. So now you can feel free to spread it with butter if you like! This is very good toasted for breakfast. If you don't have old cranberries in your freezer like me, then you need to buy some this month to make this or you won't have the chance again for a year!

Dark Molasses Bread ~ page 278

Carissa just made this bread today--I made the recipe a couple weeks ago, and mis-measured my water, so even though my bread worked and tasted great, it looked different than it was supposed to. But that is the nice thing about yeast breads--they are very forgiving, which is why no one should be afraid to make bread. Here is what my bread from the same recipe looked like...

The unusual thing about this bread is the pureed raisins. This raisin juice helps give a rich sweetness to the bread and also keeps it moist. The recipe says to add 2 cups water to the raisin, oil, molasses, and brown sugar mixture...

but I like to wait till the raisins are pureed before I add the water--it seems less messy.

Her is the mixture with the water added. Carissa did not do this, but when I told her how I mixed it, she agreed that this is a good tip.

Carissa's bread had a few raisins showing, that had not pureed completely. But like I said, homemade bread is very forgiving, and it really does not matter how it looks, it still always tastes great!

I ate supper at Carissa's house tonight, and Evelyn gave the bread a thumbs up (she learned that from her big sister!) ~Janice

Pumpkin Spice Bread ~ page 325

Well, Carissa's bread inspired me I guess, along with the 15 pound pumpkin I roasted and pureed! I made a giant batch of pumpkin soup as I was making this Pumpkin Spice Bread. I made a slew of modifications though, since I was wanting a healthier bread for the family and freezer. I used 2c regular flour plus 1c whole wheat plus 1/3c flaxmeal. Also omitted 1/2c sugar and subbed half the oil for applesauce, then added 1tsp baking powder to help with the whole wheat flour I used.

My pumpkin was much more runny than canned would have been, so I measured out 2 cups and let it drain a while.

Then I realized I'd be adding 1c of water back to the recipe, so I added to my pumpkin liquid to get to the 1 cup. And these are the random but delicious cakes I got... They were light and fluffy and moist - highly recommended!!

This last one is a vintage tin that bakes little loves about double the size of a muffin, maybe a little less. They were really cute and a nice portion size. It was handed down to me by Janice when she found it wouldn't fit in her Houston house's little oven!

New Trick with Pizza Dough ~ page 285

Carissa did a long post on this pizza dough back in April--be sure to have a look. I made this recipe today just to put a couple pizza crusts in my freezer for a quickie meal when I need it. And I learned something by accident that I thought I would share, plus one of my little tips that is not in the cookbook.

Notice something different about the two crusts in this picture?

The crust on the right I rolled out first and popped it into the oven to bake. While rolling it out, I struggled to get it to roll as thin as I wanted it to be--it kept drawing up, so I just gave up and baked it. The crust on the left, I rolled out then left it to sit for 10 minutes waiting for it's turn in the oven while the first crust baked. When I gave the second crust a final roll, I noticed it rolled out very nicely without a struggle. Later today, I mentioned this oddity to Carissa, and she just smiled and said she knew that if you let your dough rest 10 minutes, your crust will roll nicely and stay put without drawing up. Somehow, Carissa had failed to let me in on this little secret she had read about some time ago! But as you can see in my two crust shapes, it works!

Now for my own little pizza crust tip: I like to sprinkle my pan with a dusting of cornmeal, then lay my crust on top the cornmeal. This kind of creates a layer of air between the crust and the bottom of the pan, and makes for a very crisp crust.

A homemade pizza crust in the freezer is like fast food at your fingertips. You can have a delicious pizza in the oven almost as fast as you can make a sandwich!

Homestyle Bread Bowls for Soup ~ page 281

These bowls are an easy way to make dinner fun! I made these a week ago and then froze them till I needed them. They were perfect with beef stew tonight!

Evelyn gobbled up her stew....

then gobbled up her bowl!

Sorry this picture is a little blurry. Here the "bowls" are slipped out of the baking dishes.
Above are the bread bowls before rising and below is obviously after rising...just wanted to show you what they look like before and after. I dropped the stack of ramekins that I had and broke all but 2 big and 2 small ones! So I made 2 free form bowls to see how that would work if someone didn't have ramekins. I thought it worked out just fine, the bowl was just fatter and shorter, but still held soup well.
Hot out of the oven!

Aunt Judie's Swedish Limpa Bread ~ page 274

I have been on a mission lately to clean out my freezer of all the random baking that I have accumulated over the year. Colder weather is around the corner, which means I will feel like baking again. So I must clean out last years baking to make room for the new baking! This was a loaf of Limpa bread that was.... get ready for this....10 1/2 months old! I know this because the last time I made this bread was 2 weeks before last Thanksgiving since that is what I was assigned to bring to the big meal. I pulled it out of the freezer to go with dinner tonight. I just had to write a post about it to share how good it was almost a year later! It really was delicious...made me feel like I was at Thanksgiving dinner at my mom's house. So don't be afraid of the freezer for baked goods, just wrap everything well, and use good freezer bags. --Carissa

Butter Rolls ~ page 275

This is a versatile, easy dinner roll that you can't mess up, unless you over cook it. These are best when baked until just barely done--that keeps them very tender and soft.

I like to make my rolls into ovals, but I sometimes make them golf-size balls also. The ovals are nice if you want to use this an a sandwich roll. I have served these at showers and luncheons, filled with a chicken salad, and they are awesome.

If you want to freeze your rolls, cook them just a little less than called for so that you can brown them when you heat them up to serve.

The large amount of milk in this recipes keeps the rolls soft, and the butter makes them rich, so that you don't even have to butter them at dinner...but I do anyway.