Raspberry Swirl Rolls {& Sweet Roll Tips!}

I used to not be a good sweet roll maker.  Mine always turned out dense and dry.  After lots of trial and error I discovered I was adding WAY too much flour, especially in the rolling out process. My mind-frame of what the dough should look and feel like was totally wrong. I thought if it was sticky at all I hadn't added enough flour.

Lately I've discovered the secret to good sweet rolls is actually adding the least amount of flour possible.  This is what will make your rolls tender and moist.  Your dough should still be very sticky when you put it in a bowl for it's first rise.  After the first rise it loses some of it's stickiness and you can get a better idea of whether you need to add a little more flour or not.

One of the best things you can do to help you use the right amount of flour is use a kitchen scale to measure it.  I've included flour weight below for this recipe like I always do for my cookies.  This really takes a lot of guesswork out of baking sweet rolls.  Especially if you're at a high-altitude.

The other thing I do is use Pam spray instead of flour when rolling out my dough.  Sometimes you will have to add a bit more flour to get your dough to rolling consistency, but rolling the dough on a flour covered surface can really drown your dough in flour unnecessarily.  By spraying your rolling surface and rolling pin with Pam you can keep the dough from sticking, while avoiding adding excess flour.

Finally, make sure you take your rolls out of the oven when they're just barely done.  You don't want raw dough but you really don't want to overbake either or your product will be dry. 

For these raspberry swirl rolls I used raspberries from my garden and the filling was a bit tart.  Taste your berries before beginning and if they're tart add some extra sugar to your filling.   These are best the day they're made.  After that they will begin to dry out like most sweet rolls. These are tender and yummy but I think they would be even better with a cream cheese frosting, so feel free to substitute that for the glaze if you want.  

Happy carbohydrate inhaling!

White Chocolate Berry Burst Bread

So, I'm wondering, is it normal to have a whole shelf in the pantry that's your shelf??  (Aka- "Children if you eat this I will personally throw all your nerf guns into the wilderness and escort you to the orphanage.")

I walked in to our secondary pantry yesterday and realized I had an entire shelf of hidden food.  Banana Nut Crunch (Dude, children, that stuff is expensive.  No, you cannot have a bowl), Chocolate Peppermint Stick Luna bars, Honey Nut Shredded Wheat.  Gingerbread Oreos.  It's kind of gotten out of control.

Is this normal?

Is this a rite of motherhood or do I have a strange hoarding problem I never realized before?  I really don't want to be on the show hoarders.

On the other hand, when you hoard berries from your garden all summer and hide them away in the freezer, you get to make this bread.  So sometimes hoarding is a good thing, right?


This bread is full of berries and is lightly sweetened.  You can substitute some quick oats to make this healthy enough for breakfast, or you can add extra white chocolate chips to turn this into a sweeter snacking/ dessert bread.