Interruption for sweet orange rolls

I interrupt the dinner party posts for orange rolls. Halfway into our final month in our flat, the people shipping our things to Singapore came to pack up and remove everything we wanted to take with us. This consisted mostly of kitchen things, including all my baking tools and implements, leaving me only with a few very basic and battered cooking tools we plan to give away when we leave. So the weekend before the packing up happened, I felt I should bake while I still had the chance; it can apparently take up to fifteen weeks for our shipment to arrive in Singapore.

Ideally, I would’ve made cinnamon rolls. They’re comforting to eat, and while not difficult to make at all, it is a bit of a process so it feels like real baking (muffins, for example, don’t feel like real baking to me because it’s all over too quickly). But Andrew hates cinnamon.

So I made sweet orange rolls instead and they were delicious. I highly recommend them, but I also highly recommend that you follow the recipe suggestion to cut the filled, rolled-up dough into 12 pieces and place said 12 pieces in a big enough baking pan. I cut the dough into 10 pieces and then squished those ten pieces into a pan that was, it turned out, too small. The rolls rose beautifully high, so much so that they squashed a whole lot of their buttery, sugary filling out onto the oven bottom and caused a fire. Smoke! Drama! And lots of burnt caramel for me to clean, not my favourite activity on a Sunday night when I want to get a pizza in the oven (pizza dough and the resultant homemade pizza was another one of the weekend’s baking projects).

Sweet orange rolls

Makes 12

Dough:

1 ¼ c milk, warmed

1 packet instant active yeast

1/3 c sugar

2 tbsp butter, melted

1 tsp salt

1 egg, lightly beaten

4 c flour

Filling and topping:

1 c softened butter

½ c packed treacle sugar

1/3 cup orange zest (I substituted a bit of this with lemon zest)

½ tsp salt

3 c icing sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp orange extract

2 tbsp orange juice

Place all the dough ingredients except the flour in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook and mix on medium till combined. Add the flour and mix on medium to form a dough; increase the speed to medium high and knead until the dough is smooth and has come away from the sides of the bowl completely. Place the dough in an oiled bowl, cover with clingwrap and leave to double in size. This takes anywhere from one and a half to three hours.

While the dough rises, beat together the butter, brown sugar and zest to combine. Add the salt, icing sugar and extracts and beat again until light and fluffy. Remove a quarter of the mixture into a small bowl, add the orange juice and mix to combine. This mixture will “break” and look pretty grim, but don’t worry – this is the icing, you’re going to spread it over the hot rolls where it will melt into them. Cover the icing and refrigerate, and set the remaining filling aside.

When the dough has doubled in size, turn it out onto a floured surface and roll it into a rectangle measuring approximately 45cm by 22cm. Spread the filling onto the dough evenly and roll it up the way you would a Swiss roll. Trim the ends, and cut the roll into 12 pieces using a sharp knife. Lay the pieces cut-side up in a buttered baking dish, making sure there is enough space for each piece to fit in with a little bit of room between the pieces. Cover with clingwrap and refrigerate overnight.

The next morning, take the rolls out of the fridge while you preheat the oven to 190 C. Bake the rolls for about 25 minutes, until doubled in size and dark golden on top. Remove from the oven and immediately dollop the icing on the hot buns, spreading it out as it melts.

Let cool for a few minutes and eat; these are best still warm from the oven, although they reheat very well. They also freeze well.