As Per Your Requests

I'm sharing recipes today because, truthfully, I'm too sleep deprived for anything else. After announcing proudly several weeks back that my baby was sleeping through the night, he changed his mind. I am grateful for the four or six weeks that he did sleep through the night because it was right in the middle of unpacking, but I'm back to not getting more than three or four hours in a stretch.

Part of the reason I love these two recipes is because they came from my old ward cookbook. That ward still feels like "home" to me because my parents lived in that ward 20 years--all of my growing up. And though they've been in their "new" home twelve years this month, their ward has probably split five or six times and except for a few months here and there I never really have lived in that house. Anyway, this cookbook was so wonderful it was reprinted about five years after its initial printing and my mom bought two extra copies to give to my sister and I as wedding gifts. I will spare you the green jello shrimp mold, but these two are fabulous.

Lou Ella's Lickety-split Brown Sugar Muffins
(Lou Ella was a neighbor up the street from us. I've never met anybody that could talk the way she could. She was only 4'11'' and her husband was about 5'3". He was our home teacher for probably five years. She died a few years ago.)

1 C brown sugar
1 C milk
2 C flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 egg
1/2 C butter
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla

Mix ingredients together well (electric beaters don't produce as good of results). Pour into greased or papered muffin tins about 2/3 full. Bake at 375 for 15-20 minutes. One dozen.

So easy! And you nearly always have the ingredients on hand for them. That is why they are a Sunday favorite. Delicious and not fancy. They are very sweet and fatty--almost like a cupcake. There are some great and tasty variations on these that we've tried also to make them a little more healthful or just different, but still good. You can use any of these modifications in conjunction with each other or separate:

* cut sugar back to 3/4 a cup
* sub applesauce for part of the fat
* add 1/2 cup of nuts
* sub one cup of white flour with whole wheat bread flour
* add 1/2 cup of finely chopped apple
* add 1/2 cup of oatmeal

Orange Rolls
(The woman who submitted this was one of my mom's best friends. Her son and I grew up together in the same ward, though he was always in the Sunday School class ahead of me. I never thought much of him until he and I were part of a school trip to London when we were juniors. We became much better friends after that, and I still am interested to learn what he is up to. Anyway, this sister was the queen of all things domestic, but she was not one of those women you hated for her gifts because she was always charming and nice and helpful and willing to share her talents. She made my wedding cake.)

This recipe is not for the faint of heart, but so worth it.

1/3 C oil
1/4 C sugar
3/4 C scalded milk
1/2 C cold water
1 Tbsp yeast sprinkled over 1/4 C warm water and 1 tsp sugar
1 tsp salt
1 egg
3 1/2 C flour
1/2 tsp grated orange peel

Scald milk and pour into a large bowl. Add oil, sugar, cold water and egg. Add 1 Cup of flour, orange rind and salt. Mix. Add the yeast mixture, then remaining flour. (You may need slightly more than 3 1/2 cups total). Let rise until double. Punch down and let rise 5 minutes more. Roll out on a floured board in a rectangle. (The rest of the directions are my own as they vary slightly from the original.)

You can do these rolls a couple of different ways. You can make large or small cinnamon roll type buns or you can put small rolls into greased muffin tins. The biggest difference will be the size of your rectangle. I roll mine to just over two feet by about nine or ten inches. This dough is divinely soft and fabulous to work with.

Spread with soft butter--dont' be chintzy. The recipe calls for sprinkling the butter with sugar and grated orange rind--no amount specified. At this stage I also add chopped Craisins (orange flavored if you can find them) and I think chopped pecans or walnuts would be fabulous too, but the boys in my house boycott almost all foods where they can actually SEE the nuts. (The two expections are cashews in the stir fry and pine nuts in the pesto.)

Roll up, and cut into 3/4 inch segments using the string method. Put them in the pan and let them raise in a warm spot 45 minutes to and hour, covered. Bake at 375 for about 11 or 12 minutes, depending on the size of the rolls and the desired doneness.

These are especially fabulous with the following glaze:

Beat together 2 tsp of soft butter with 3 oz of soft cream cheese. Juice the oranges you took the rind from and beat the juice into the cream cheese mixture. Add some powdered sugar and beat. If it is too runny for your taste, add more sugar. Too thick--add more juice (about 1 tsp at a time).

They are delicious glazed warm, but if you glaze them all they are hard to store and stick together. After you and your husband have eaten about four of these apiece fresh out of the oven, I store them in a container with a lid and just glaze them individually and then microwave them for a few seconds until warm.

These rolls are delicious and festive. They are kind of a Christmas Day brunch tradition with us, but you have to make the dough pretty early in the morning. Plan on three-four hours start to finish. Unless you make homemade pizza and explode some cookware during the process. Then you are looking at more like six or seven hours. I wouldn't recommend this.