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Mini Orange Cinnamon Rolls

Sarah Kieffer — Wed, 22 Jan 2025 00:25:37 +0000

Orange buns: so unassuming at first glance! But don’t let them fool you. These small buns are light and sweet throughout, with some caramelization on their bottoms from the orange-sugar filling. Then they are topped with even more orange in the form of icing that makes for a perfect, mini-sized bite. I still use my Sweet Dough recipe for mini cinnamon rolls, and after many tries, found splitting the dough into three pieces, then rolling each piece out into separate logs (which are then cut into twelve pieces each) made for the perfect dough-to-filling ratio. I like my cinnamon rolls super soft and gooey, so I put a thin layer of the icing over them while they are warm. The icing melts into the just baked rolls, eliminating any hard corners or edges. Important Tips for Making Mini Cinnamon Rolls I have found these mini buns bake best in a 10 by 15 in [25 by 38 cm] jelly roll pan, but you can see the notes below in the recipe for using a 9 by 13 in [23 by 33 cm] baking pan. Can I Make These Ahead of Time? Yes! Prepare the rolls: roll out dough, fill them, roll them up, cut […]

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Ginger Orange Carrot Quick Bread

Sarah Kieffer — Thu, 11 May 2023 19:09:11 +0000

What I love about this recipe: This Ginger Orange Carrot Bread is a new recipe from 100 Morning Treats, my fourth cookbook that was just released. The flavors of ginger and orange are faint, but their subtleness makes this bread shine, pairing with naturally sweet fresh carrots. Orange zest and triple sec give it a lovely brightness, too. This loaf stays moist for days, and I actually prefer it on the second and third days; the flavor develops and it becomes more tender. Baking With Nordic Ware Pans Over the last decade of baking, I’ve come to rely on Nordic Ware for almost all my baking pans. Their pans are not only beautiful, but durable and well-made. For my 100 Cookies cookbook, I relied on their Naturals® baking sheets for many of my recipes, and my last two books have incorporated more of their other pans: The Naturals® muffin pans, Bundt pans, and Popover pans were all used and loved. For my Ginger Orange Carrot Bread, I used the ProCast Classic Loaf Pan, which has a 6 cup (1 lb loaf) capacity. This pan is made from heavy cast aluminum, which ensures that both quick and yeasted breads bake evenly. This pan also has […]

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Fig and Orange Sables

Sarah Kieffer — Fri, 27 Nov 2020 15:44:08 +0000

From 2020: This Thanksgiving was unusual, to be sure. Our family made the decision to spend it with just our immediate household, and while my two kids understand the necessity of social distancing, it still brought a lot of heartache. We made a short house call to our family: dropping off pies on doorstops: pumpkin, chocolate mousse, and apple. “I have always loved a window, especially an open one,” Wendell Berry commented, and I couldn’t help agreeing with him after throwing hugs and kisses to my sweet little nieces through glass. But we had each other, we had plenty of food, we had a roof over our heads, and it was enough. “History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. [N]othing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings.” Wendell Berry ******** These delicious shortbread cookies are made with California Dried Figs and based on the Sables recipe from my 100 Cookies cookbook. I grew up in a household that always had a package of soft fig-filled sandwich cookies […]

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Blueberry Orange Bundt Cake

Sarah Kieffer — Fri, 09 Aug 2019 21:57:17 +0000

I have a gigantic stack of cookbooks that I have been meaning to bake and cook from, but sadly they have sitting on my dining room table (along with heaps of legos and papers to be sorted and summer homework that hasn’t been started and laundry to be folded and and and…) while I finished working on my next book. So I am finally getting to other-than-cookbook-baking. The first book up is Sarah Copeland’s Every Day is Saturday, which is a beautiful book (photographed by the amazing Gentl + Hyers) filled with recipes and strategies for easy cooking, every day of the week. Copeland sums up the book this way: I’m not suggesting we can have it all. We all know good things take time, and often, sacrifice. They take intention. But I do think the feeling of having it all, of having life in abundance, is within our reach…By stealing back a few hours from the weekend, queuing your favorite podcast, and working through a short list of sauces and sides to tuck away in the refrigerator, you can live like it’s Saturday every day of the week, or at least most of them. I made the Almost-Famous Cranberry […]

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Buttery, Flaky Morning Buns

Sarah Kieffer — Mon, 25 Jun 2018 03:47:01 +0000

I promised another bun recipe for you, and here it is: Morning Buns. Unlike the Cinnamon Bun recipe you all love, this one uses a quick Danish dough, which gives each morning bun buttery, flaky layers. I based the filling off the famous Tartine morning bun filling – I recently went to San Fransisco for the first time ever, and got to visit Tartine and try their famous morning buns (which I am still dreaming about). The buns are then coated in a cream cheese-orange icing, which brings out the orange flavor inside the filling, and also helps keep the centers tender and gooey. ***************************** Where the sweet fields do lie forgot,Where willing Nature does to all dispenseA wild and fragrant innocence;And fauns and fairies do the meadows tillMore by their presence than their skillTheir statues polished by some ancient handMay to adorn the garden standBut, howsoe’er the figures do excel,The god themselves with us do dwell.-Andrew Marvell, The Mower Against the Gardens Summer is upon us, and I admit happily that I am enjoying the leisurely approach to life. There are no alarm clocks waking us before the sun, no lunches to pack, no children complaining about homework. I […]

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Blueberry-Orange Breakfast Rolls

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 08 Apr 2018 13:54:39 +0000

“Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry.” – Leonard Koren I met Melissa Coleman (also known as The Faux Martha) so many years ago when she came to my home one cold winter day, with her husband Kevin and daughter Halle. We had a lovely breakfast together, and went from “blogger friends” to real friends. A few years after our initial meeting she ended up moving to Minneapolis (into the famous Fauxhouse), and I’ve enjoyed getting to know her and her family. We’ve talked work, food, religion and politics, and always find ourselves on the same page. Her cookbook is a lovely collection of recipes. Her philosophy in the kitchen is efficiency, less is more, and of course, minimalism. “I like to think of minimalism as a practice, because it needs constant refining. Rules that are too rigid will strip away joy. Rules that are too loose will create an overflowing and frustrating kitchen. The magic is in the space between, or as Koren refers to it, the magic is in the poetry. And mastering that kind of magic takes continual practice.” I will be the first to admit that I am not a minimalist; very far from […]

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Olive Oil Sugar Cookies with Blood Orange Glaze

Sarah Kieffer — Fri, 03 Mar 2017 04:22:44 +0000

These olive oil sugar cookies are a variation of the Sugar Cookies with Lemon Glaze from my book. They can be made with or without the pistachios (both versions are there). I think they are good both ways. Regular oranges will also work for the icing, but you won’t get the pretty pink color. You can cut them out into different shapes (see hearts above), but they do puff up a bit when baking and sometimes won’t keep sharp lines, depending on the shape. I find circles work best. written in 2019 The day before my cookie book came out, I decided I was going to spend the entire winter reading. My plan was to take my kids to the bus stop each morning, send them off with a kiss and a wave, and then take a giant mug of warm coffee (with a splash of half and half), curl up in my bed under piles of blankets, and read all the books. Yes, all of them. However, today as I was washing dishes after an entire day in the kitchen baking, it occurred to me that I haven’t done this once, not one.single.time. (O, to be sure, we laugh […]

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Chocolate Orange Scone Loaf

Sarah Kieffer — Sun, 09 Oct 2016 13:33:56 +0000

As someone slightly obsessed with scones, you can imagine my delight flipping through Molly’s new cookbook only to discover this take on my favorite breakfast. A scone loaf? Of course! Why didn’t I think of this years ago? I’ve adapted her recipe slightly, turning chocolate marzipan into chocolate orange, one of my favorite scone combinations. I met Molly for the first time several years ago in Las Vegas of all places, and liked her immediately. Warm, kind, hilarious, and genuine are all words that belong to her. I’ve eagerly awaited her new cookbook, and am happy to report it is lovely, with unique recipes, stories worth curling up with (I’m a cookbook-as-novel type person), and photographs that capture her engaging personality perfectly. More Scone Recipes: Pumpkin Scones with Maple Glaze Ginger Chocolate Chip Scones Lemon White Chocolate Scones

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Chocolate Orange Cheesecake

Sarah Kieffer — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 17:30:13 +0000

Chocolate-Orange Cheesecake Adapted from Brown Eggs and Jam Jars by Aimée Wimbush-Bourque Aimée’s cookbook, Brown Eggs and Jam Jars, is quite lovely. I changed a couple things from the original recipe. Her cheesecake is a citrus cheesecake, and I made this one just with orange juice. I also added a chocolate glaze to the top. This cheesecake is delicious! The light orange flavor and chocolate pair well together. ________________________________________________________________ “The definition of a fairy-story – what it is, or what it should be – does not, then, depend on any definition of historical account of elf or fairy, but upon the nature of Faerie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country. I will not attempt to define that, nor to describe it directly. It cannot be done. Faerie cannot be caught in a net of words; for it is one of its qualities to be indescribable, though not imperceptible. It has many ingredients, but analysis will not necessarily discover the secret of the whole. For the moment I will say only this: a ‘fairy-story’ is one which touches on or uses Faerie, whatever its own main purpose may be: satire, adventure, morality, fantasy. Faerie itself […]

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Grand Marnier Orange Cake

Sarah Kieffer — Tue, 13 Jan 2015 03:15:27 +0000

“Gathering around the dinner table has been and still is the highlight of our day… We believe that eating together is more than just everyone sitting down at the table; it’s about the communal meal, which at its best is the ritual of sharing food, of cooking together, eating together, and laughing together. Our recipes return families to the idea of a common pot.” A few weeks ago I was sent a copy of The Pollan Family Table, a cookbook celebrating good, simple food for the family table. I always appreciate cookbooks of this variety – as someone who tries to cook a dinner meal five times a week, I often find myself running out of ideas that my whole family will enjoy. This cookbook does just that. It inspires with healthy ingredients and seasonal recipes. Of course I was drawn immediately to the dessert section, and so made Grandma Mary’s Grand Marnier Orange Cake. This cake! I must admit I usually go for chocolate-y things, but I had a bag of blood oranges and decided to try out the Bundt cake. This cake! It’s crazy good. Grand Marnier Orange Cake Recipe adapted from The Pollan Family Table I changed […]

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