Tag Archives: Agnes Badertscher

Grandma Kohler’s Triple-Treat Sweet Roll Dough

Like My Mother Made

My husband doesn’t spend a lot of time wallowing in nostalgia for the foods that his mother cooked. But he has frequently mentioned his mother’s cinnamon rolls, so I figured I’d better find a recipe that could replicate Agnes Badertscher’s cinnamon rolls, which were actually made from a sweet roll dough.  What I got was both a surprise and a bonus of three recipes in one, including a loaf of just about the best white bread I’ve ever had.

Sweet white bread

White sweet bread loaf from Grandma Kohler’s sweet roll recipe.

I contacted Kay Badertscher Bass, Ken’s sister, who has written here before about vintage Badertscher recipes and about the Dalton Dariette run by their uncle.  She knew immediately what rolls her brother was talking about, and informed me that they were actually from a sweet dough recipe of Ken’s Grandmother, Helen Kohler. Even better, I thought, a three generation recipe I could pass on to my grand daughter as I did my own grandmother Anderson’s sugar cookie recipe.

Kay went digging for the sweet roll dough recipe, and soon I got the following e-mail, which sheds light on the history of the yeast dough. Turns out it yields three or four different types of sweet rolls, if you would be overwhelmed by three dozen cinnamon rolls and want variety.  Here’s Kay’s message that describes a novel way to help along the rising sweet roll dough.

The Original Sweet Roll Dough Recipe

Okay, I think I’ve unearthed what you are looking for.  It’s called New Year’s Bread* and it is an OLD recipe.  I recall Mom and Grandma Kohler getting together and making this recipe in batches for coffee cake, dinner rolls and sticky buns.  The most distinct memory was how Grandma Kohler asked Mom to put boiling water in both sides of the kitchen sink to sit and then placed the dough underneath the sink in the cabinet, covered with cloth towels to rise.  (and I also remember getting scolded royally when I kept opening the cabinet doors to see what was happening)
Here’s the basic bread recipe:
2 c. scalded milk
1/2 c. sugar
1 tsp. salt
1/4 c. butter
1/4 c. Crisco
2 pkg. (2 T.) yeast
1/2 c. warm water
2 eggs, beaten
6 – 7 c. flour

Pour scaled milk over sugar, salt, butter and Crisco.  Set aside.  Then mix yeast in warm water.  Add the yeast mixture and eggs to milk mixture.  Add enough flour to make soft dough, knead, let rise.

Depending upon what you decide to make with the dough, the instructions are to bake at 350 degrees for 30 – 40 min. (which may or may not be accurate) (NOTE: It is NOT accurate. It does not take that long. See recipe adaptation below.)

If making dinner rolls brush tops with butter after taking them out of the oven.

The streusel topping was a mixture of brown sugar, cinnamon, butter and a little flour….of course, no measurements!  Grandma Kohler used to divide the coffee cake dough in half and put some of the streusel in the middle as well as the top.

The sticky buns were usually made by rolling out the dough into a rectangle, sprinkling the streusel mix over the dough and then rolling up into a log.  Grandma Kohler would dust the bottom of the pan with lots of butter and a little streusel and then place the rolls on top and dust them with a little more streusel before baking.

Sorry this isn’t more specific.  Mom and Grandma Kohler used the “by gosh and by golly” method of baking with a pinch of this and a handful of that.  But we grandkids loved that coffee cake just as much as Ken, I’m certain!  Probably why Grandma finally switched to the frozen bread dough in the latter years cause we asked for it constantly.

Well, that’s shocking!! the traditional way of making a vintage family recipe three generations ago was frozen bread dough??? That certainly plays hob with our assumptions of what is vintage, doesn’t it?

*One thing still puzzles us.  Grandma Kohler called the recipe New Year’s Bread, but she did not make a braided bread that is the tradition in Swiss and German New Year’s Breads.  I checked out my vintage Sonnenberg Centennial cookbook, and found the recipe for New Year’s Bread which is only slightly different, so next time I make this recipe, I may experiment with a braided loaf. Wish me luck.

At any rate, I blended some of the instructions in the Sonnenberg book (from a recipe submitted by a close friend of Agnes Badertscher) and I made Kohler’s recipe for sweet roll dough (before she turned to frozen bread dough), and enjoyed making a pretty big batch of dough.  I made a dozen cinnamon rolls, a dozen cloverleaf rolls and one delicious free-form loaf.

Sweet roll dough

Grandma Kohler’s sweet roll dough BEFORE rising! you can see by the 2-cup measure on the side that this is a large amount of dough.

Cinnamon rolls

Cinnamon rolls from Grandma Kohler’s sweet roll dough.

Ken looked at the rolls and immediately said those words every wife dreads–“Not like my mother’s.”  When I turned it over and showed him the side where I had sprinkled granola, obscuring the coils of the cinnamon roll, he said, “That looks more like it.”  Then he gave it the taste test.  Really good, he said. But that is not my mother’s coffee cake.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.  He apparently was thinking of his mother’s baking-powder raised coffee cake with streusel on top rather than the more elaborate yeast dough that goes into the sweet rolls.

Oh well, nothing lost.  He (and I) enjoyed every bit of the cinnamon rolls, sweet dinner rolls and white bread that the sweet roll dough provided.

Adapted Sweet Roll Dough Recipe

Here is the sweet roll dough recipe–hopefully a little clearer than the “by gosh and by golly” instructions that came directly from grandma Kohler and Ken’s mother.

Do not be intimidated by the length of the recipe. Remember, I am trying to give you fairly detailed instructions for making THREE kinds of breads.

THANK YOU KAY!

Sweet Roll Dough – Cinnamon Rolls, Dinner Rolls, Bread

Serves 36
Prep time 3 hours
Cook time 45 minutes
Total time 3 hours, 45 minutes
Allergy Egg, Milk, Wheat
Meal type Bread, Breakfast
Misc Child Friendly, Freezable, Pre-preparable
A tried and true family recipe yields cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls or loaves of white bread.

Ingredients

proofing yeast

  • 2 packets active dry yeast (Equivalent: 4 1/2 teaspoons)
  • 1/2 cup warm water (Comfortable to drop on wrist.)
  • 1 heaped teaspoon sugar (for proofing yeast)

dough

  • 1/2 cup sugar (for dough)
  • 6-7 cups flour (plus more for kneading and patting out dough.)
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/4 cup butter
  • 1/4 cup solid vegetable shortening
  • 2 cups milk (heat just short of boiling)
  • 2 eggs (beaten lightly)

Cinnamon roll topping

  • 1/2 cup butter (melted)
  • 6 tablespoons white sugar
  • 4 tablespoons brown sugar
  • 3 teaspoons cinnamon

Cinnamon roll topping (Optional)

  • 1/3 cup granola cereal or chopped nuts

Directions

Proof yeast
1. Sprinkle yeast on warm water in 2-cup container.Briefly mix in teaspoon of sugar. Set aside.
Mix dough
2. Blend dry ingredients--3 cups of the flour, 1/2 C sugar, salt.
3. Heat milk with butter and vegetable shortening and cool to lukewarm.
4. With electric mixer in large bowl, beat the dry ingredients (with the 3 cups of flour) and and the hot milk/shortening mixture until batter is smooth.
5. Add the yeast (which will have risen if it is active) and the eggs and stir with spoon until blended into very sticky dough.
6. Work remaining flour into dough with fingers, 1/2-1 cup at a time until the dough no longer sticks to fingers. Use as much of the 3 cups as you need.
7. Turn dough out on lightly floured surface and knead until springy and elastic.
Mix dough.
8. Shape into a ball, and place in greased mixing bowl. Put the smooth side down first, and then turn the dough that all surfaces are oily. (You can use the same bowl you mixed the dough in if you first scrape out most of the dried dough sticking to the surface.) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap or a tea towel.
9. Let rise until doubled in warm, draft-free location. ( 1 to 2 hours)
Shaping rolls
10. Divide the dough into two or three pieces. Put the pieces you are not working with in the refrigerator.
11. For Cinnamon rolls, pat out the dough to a rough rectangle, then roll out (if you use 1/3 of the dough it will be about 14" x 18". )
Baking rolls
12. Grease 9 x 9 square pan or large pie pan, or cookie sheet for cinnamon rolls and mix the sugars and cinnamon for topping. If you are using granola or nuts, sprinkle them on the bottom of the pan.
13. Brush the top of the dough rectangle with melted butter, and sprinkle on the sugar-cinnamon mixture.
14. Roll the dough up from one long side to make a log and pinch closed the seam.
15. Using a very sharp knife or a piece of unwaxed dental floss, cut one-inch pieces from the log.
Baking Rolls
16. Place the rolls on the pan. If you use a cookie sheet and leave space between they will be crusty. If you place the side by side in a pan they will be softer on the sides. Cover with a tea towel and set aside to rise.
Baking rolls
17. When the rolls have risen by a third to double their original height (30-45 minutes), bake in 375 degree oven for 15 minutes (longer for glass pans).
Dinner rolls
18. To make dinner rolls, shape one batch of dough as you wish--clover leaf by placing three walnut-sized pieces of dough in a muffin tin; Parker house by placing balls of dough side by side in cake pan, etc. Place in buttered pan. Let rise and bake as for cinnamon rolls. When they come out of the oven, brush the tops with butter.
Free form loaf of bread
19. To make a free form loaf of bread, make a rectangle as described for the cinnamon rolls. Fold the dough over in thirds lengthwise, pinch the seam closed, and fold under the ends to make a nice shape. Place with seam side down on greased cookie sheet. Raise and bake as described for other rolls, except that it may take a little longer. Test doneness by knocking with knuckles to see if you get a hollow sound. Brush top of bread with butter when it comes out of oven.

Note

The 1/2 cup of butter is more than enough for the cinnamon rolls if you are making 1/3 of the recipe into cinnamon rolls. I used the rest to butter the pans and to brush on the top of the dinner rolls and the bread.

If you are making more than 1/3 of the dough into cinnamon rolls, increase the sugar/cinnamon ratios for the topping.

I have described the three things I did with this dough. Making a good sized loaf of bread, a dozen cloverleaf dinner rolls and a dozen cinnamon rolls. Of course, there is nothing to prevent you from making all cinnamon rolls, all dinner rolls, or whatever you wish. The bread and dinner rolls should freeze nicely. The cinnamon rolls are problematic because of the sugar. And of course you can add raisins or dried fruit or seeds or nuts to the dinner rolls and bread.

This is a recipe with tremendous flexibility.

Have fun!

 

Rhubarb Pie with Tapioca

Frequently as I look at recipes from the past, and think about what my ancestors in aprons had in their kitchens, I realize how different our staples were.  What things would grandmother and great-grandmother have in their kitchen that I no longer think of as necessary?

Minute Tapioca

Minute Tapioca in its current box.

Tapioca–before the 1900’s old-fashioned ball tapioca, and after that, Kraft Minute Tapioca® in a small red box.  Tapioca went on the market in 1894, and you can read the history of Minute Tapioca here.

My mother always had it on her shelf, as did my grandmother, I imagine.  So did Agnes Badertscher (Ken’s mother.)

Ken loves rhubarb pie, but he has been after me to make it his mother’s way, thickened with tapioca, so I delved into the comfort food of old–tapioca. Besides making a nice, bland, comfortable pudding, tapioca is handy for thickening all sorts of things.

I made a rhubarb-strawberry pie by accident. Because it turned out the farmer’s booth at the farmer’s market did not have enough rhubarb for a pie, I had to stretch it with strawberries. But I used Minute Tapioca for the thickening instead of flour, for the first time.  And it was great. Agnes Badertscher’s way of making rhubarb pie has won me over.

strawberry-Rhubarb pie

Strawberry-Rhubarb Pie made Agnes Badertscher’s way with tapioca.

I’m pretty sure that Agnes, as well as my mother, would have initially used the recipe on the package, which has not changed, so I used the Minute Tapioca which has not been a staple in my kitchen for a very long time, and tweaked their recipe just a bit. Be sure to use the perfect pie crust recipe.

Rhubarb-Strawberry Pie with Tapioca

Ingredients

  • 2 cups strawberries (sliced)
  • 2 cups rhubarb (peeled and cut in chunks)
  • 1/4 cup Minute Tapioca
  • 1 1/4 cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon grated orange peel (optional)
  • 2 tablespoons butter (cut in small pieces)
  • Pastry for double-crust pie

Directions

1. Mix fruit, apioca, sugar in bowl. Let stand while rolling out pie crust for 9-inch pie plate.
2. Fill crust with fruit mixture.
3. Dot with butter, cover with top crust, seal. Cut slits in top.
4. Brush top crust with milk and sprinkle with a little sugar.
5. Place pie plate on a cookie sheet and slide into preheated 400 degree oven. Bake 45-50 minutes.

Note

This turned out sweeter than I like my rhubarb pie. I would cut the sugar if I make it again with strawberries. On the other hand, if it is rhubarb alone, it might need that much sugar.

Adults Only Christmas Cookies: Bourbon Balls

Santa and bourbon balls. Agnes Badertscher made the winking Santa Mug in 1968.

Santa and bourbon balls

These are the only cookies on my list that are labeled “adults only.” And they are the cookies that must be made at least a week before they are going to be eaten, so hurry–you’re just getting here in time to make Bourbon Balls for Christmas. The winking Santa Mug  was made by Agnes Badertscher  in 1968.

Don’t worry, Bourbon balls are simple to make–no baking–and they make your kitchen smell heavenly. Bourbon and chocolate and pecans.  Yum.

Everybody loves Christmas Cookies, but everyone also has a favorite.  I’ve talked about my late father-in-law’s favorite cookie, Pfefferneuse; about my three boys favorite when they were small, their Grandma Badertscher’s  Butterscotchers; about my husband’s favorite, Double Crunchers and about everyone’s favorite, Emily Dickinson’s Black Cake. Since you have to check driver’s licenses before you hand out Bourbon Balls, pretty much everybody wants to get their hands (or mouths) on these little flavor bombs, too, but the one person who really kicks up a fuss if he doesn’t get his yearly Bourbon Balls is my brother, Bill (Paul William) Kaser.

The recipe is below, but the first step in the directions should really be “Take off any rings you are wearing and wash your hands well.”  Because you are definitely going to dig your hands into the dough on these. There’s no other way to make them.

Christmas Cookie: Bourbon Balls

Serves 5 doz. small cookies
Allergy Tree Nuts, Wheat
Meal type Dessert
Occasion Christmas

Ingredients

  • 2 1/2 cups crushed vanilla wafers (11 oz box)
  • 1 1/4 cup pecans (coarsely chopped)
  • 2 tablespoons powdered unsweetened cocoa
  • 2 tablespoons corn syrup (Either light or dark)
  • 1/3-1/2 cup bourbon (See note)
  • 1 1/2 cup confectioner's sugar
  • 4 tablespoons powdered unsweetened cocoa

Directions

1. Mix wafers, pecans, cocoa and corn syrup. Add in enough bourbon to make a sticky dough. It will still be somewhat crumbly.
2. Scoop up the dough by scant spoonfuls, press together with hand. Roll between palms into a ball about 1/2 " in diameter.
3. Mix well the confectioners sugar and 4 Tablespoons cocoa in a small bowl.
4. Roll each ball in the sugar mixture until coated.
5. If you want a more dense covering of sugar/cocoa, let stand an hour or so then roll again before storing in airtight container to ripen for at least a week.

Note

Although I traditionally make these as bourbon balls, they can also morph into rum balls, chocolate liqueur balls, or even anise-flavored ouzo balls. Don't be afraid to experiment. However, just as when you cook with wine, the better the quality of the liquor, the better the taste of the finished product.