Salad Days

"...My salad days, When I was green in judgment, cold in blood..."
                            Cleopatra,  Antony & Cleopatra Act One by WIlliam Shakespeare (1606)

While The Picky Eater is happy to inform me fairly frequently that my "salad days" are over, and I might have to reluctantly admit that is true, recently it seems like my days of eating salad have just begun. For many years I had a hardcore aversion to lettuce for several reasons- as a caterer many aeons ago I had to wash pounds and pounds of it, tedious even for someone  who loves splashing around in the water and ranked scrubbing the kitchen sink as one of her favorite childhood activities, right after washing her hands, and because lettuce tastes pretty blah when it isn't swathed in a yummy fat based dressing, which guilt induced me to avoid. Recently it seems that I have come to grips with both these objections and am eating salad on a regular basis. I quite like the mixed green melanges now widely available, albeit swathed in mustardy vinaigrette and garnished with nuts and goat cheese, which more than compensates for lettuce's (to me) lackluster flavor.

While I am only a recent convert to the delights of lettuce, I have always been a big fan of main course salads that employ other vehicles for salad dressing. Without lettuce, they last for days, and make a quick leftover lunch or dinner.

I prefer a high ratio of veggie additives to base greens, but feel free to add more as desired. And here, without further ado, are several of my favorites: **

Hard to make even a delicious salad look attractive!

Ramen Chinese Chicken Salad
Serves 4-6
A tried and true recipe that multiplies easily to feed a crowd. My friend Julie and I have made this in bulk for up to sixty people.

3 c. shredded cooked chicken (leftover or 2-3 poached chicken breasts, see poaching directions below)
5 green onions, trimmed and thinly sliced, including some of the green tops
1 cucumber
1/2 head Napa cabbage (save the other half for the Mexican Cabbage Salad)
2 packages Ramen soup mix, any flavor
1 1/2 c. raw almonds
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Optional additions of choice, use 1-2 cups total: diced celery, shredded carrots, sliced mushrooms, radishes or water chestnuts

Those noodles much beloved by hungry college students put to a higher use.

Soy Sauce Dressing (adapted from Barbara Tropp's The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking)

3 1/2 Tb sesame oil
3 1/2 Tb soy sauce
1 1/2 Tb balsamic vinegar
2 Tb sugar
2 t. salt
1 1/2 t. hot chili oil

If using uncooked chicken breasts, poach them using my variant on a Chinese technique from Barbara Tropp:
Poached Chicken Breasts
2-3 chicken breast halves (boned, skinned, boneless, skinless, whatever)
14 oz can chicken stock
quarter size piece of fresh ginger, peeled
1 whole green onion, trimmed and cut into three pieces

Place the chicken breasts  in a small, heavy pot and add the broth and enough water to cover them by 2 inches. Make sure that the chicken is completely submerged. Smash the ginger and green onion pieces with the side of a cleaver or chef's knife and add to the pot. Bring the broth to a boil over high heat. Turn off the heat, cover the pot, and let the chicken sit in the poaching liquid for 2 hours. Remove the chicken breasts, refrigerate, and shred when needed to use.

Making the salad

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spread the nuts on a rimmed cookies sheet and toast in the oven until nicely browned and crunchy, about 6-8 minutes. Do not over bake or they will burn and taste nasty. Coarsely chop the nuts and put them in a large salad bowl. Add the shredded chicken and green onions.

Quarter the cucumber and cut it into thin slices, and shred the cabbage by cutting the head in half vertically down the middle, making horizontal and vertical cuts about 2" apart in it like dicing an onion, then lay it flat on the cutting board and thinly slice it. Add both vegetables to the salad bowl. Crumble the Ramen noodles into the salad bowl and discard the seasoning packets. Add the cilantro and any of the optional additions that you are using. Toss everything together.

Make the dressing in a 1 or 2 cup measuring cup and whisk diligently until it is homogeneous. Pour the dressing over the salad, being sure to scrape out the residual sugar crystals, and toss well. The noodles will soften as the salad sits after dressing. A nice balance of crunchy and soggy is met if you tossed the salad about one hour before serving it.

Mexican Cabbage Salad
Serves 4-6

Our favorite Mexican restaurant in Modesto, La Morenita, serves a dish of cabbage slaw as a condiment with your chips and salsa which I can't eat enough of. Recently I started poking around to see if I could find an equivalent recipe on the web. A little judicious surfing produced three recipes, including one from Jamie Oliver and one from Mark Bittman, that I amalgamated into one super scrumptious, spicy, and tangy coleslaw. Not a meal in and of itself unless you have sworn off carbs and most proteins, like one anonymous Picky Eater of my acquaintance, who actually would find this recipe "too spicy."

There is something very satisfying about the process
of shredding cabbage, especially for these salads.

1/2  head of cabbage, thinly sliced
2 carrots, peeled & coarsely grated
1 small bunch of radishes (about 10), trimmed and thinly sliced
1 colorful bell pepper- red, yellow or orange, diced
1 small red onion, quartered & thinly sliced
2 jalapeno peppers, seeded and finely diced
1/2 pint cherry tomatoes or 2-3 plum tomatoes, finely diced
1/4 c. chopped cilantro

Dressing:
2 heaping tsp. of Dijon mustard
zest of one lime
2 Tb fresh lime juice (about what you get from 1 juicy lime)
1 clove garlic put through a press or finely chopped
1/3 c. olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Optional: Crispy Tortilla Strips
These are a delicious topping for Mexican salads and chilis. Quick, easy, and low fat.
4 fresh corn tortillas
Preheat the oven to 350F. Cut the tortillas into thin strips and place on a cookie sheet. Toast the tortilla strips in the oven until they are crisp- about 5 minutes.

Gently combine all the prepared vegetables together in a large salad bowl. Mix all the dressing ingredients except the olive oil together, then whisk in the oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the salad and gently stir with a rubber spatula to coat all the vegetables. Eat as a side dish with crispy tortilla strips. Would be good with grilled or roasted meats, spicy beans, quesadillas, etc.

Last, but not least, an Italian style white bean & tuna salad, an amalgamation of three (!) recipes from the cookbook Trattoria by Patricia Wells. The Daddy gave me an unexpected compliment on this salad's "distinct oil profile without the usual strong acidic viniagrette aspect," and then proceeded to tell me that he probably liked it because he was hungry while waiting for the roast to finish cooking. That's the sort of feedback that I just live for.

Italian Bean Salad with (or without) Tuna
Serves 4-6

For the beans
12 oz dried cannellini (white) beans

1 rib celery, broken in 1/2
3 cloves garlic, smashed
1 bay leaf
or, if pressed for time, use 2 14 oz. cans of cooked Italian cannellini beans.. (but the flavor won't be as good!)

For the salad
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tb balsamic vinegar
3 stalks of celery, diced
1 cup stuffed olives (I like them stuffed with sun-dried tomatoes), cut in rounds
1/4 cup green onions, diced
1 red bell pepper, diced
1/4 cup Italian parsley, chopped
1 can Italian tuna packed in olive oil
salt & pepper to taste

Preparing & cooking the beans


You can use the "quick soak" method to pre-soak the beans. Put the beans in a large pot and cover with at least 2 inches of water. Bring the beans to a boil over medium heat. Turn the heat off and let the pot sit until the water cools down, about one hour.

Strain the beans from the soaking water. Put the beans in a large pot and cover generously with water. Add the onion, celery, garlic, and bay leaf. Bring the pot to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat and simmer until all the beans are soft, about 1 hour. Add more water if it reduces too much.

Drain the beans, and place in a large bowl while still warm. Toss with the olive oil and balsamic vinegar and some salt. Cool to room temperature.

Gently add all the remaining ingredients except the tuna to the beans. Taste for additional salt, pepper, and a tad more olive oil and vinegar to taste. Turn into a low, flattish serving dish, like a gratin dish.

Drain the olive oil and crumble on top of the beans. Serve & enjoy!

While researching (if you can call it that) this post, I came across a newish book by Patricia Wells- Salad As a Meal: Healthy Main-Dish Salads for Every Season. I look forward to reporting on the contents, although while I am a big fan (the polenta croutons look very enticing!), I do despair that she has lived in Paris/Provence too long when she asks for trout eggs, halibut cheeks, and ultra-fresh eggs for her recipes.

** Quoting Shakespeare appears to have brought out my most pompous voice. Sorry!!

A Tale of Two Honey Cakes

Looking good, but tasting not so good!

More often than I like, it seems that one's childhood memories have vastly improved on reality. I was reminded of this once again when baking my grandmother's honey cake. I remembered it as moist, chock full of walnuts and redolent of whiskey, which nicely cut the cake's sweetness, and made it taste absolutely yummy.  All of which was pretty surprising because my grandmother was the sort of person who tended to beat most things, including cakes and her family's faults, to death. While admitting that there might well have been an element of operator error, the results of our honey cake baking during the Great Holiday Bake-Off Day were less than stellar. I NEVER bake cakes that end up tasting dry, bland and blah. What a disappointment! I do suspect that there were probably some issues-  possible over baking the small loaf size cakes and weak coffee flavoring, but come on ... Someone, usually the Daddy, who still frets over starving children in China, ends up consuming any cake-like substance laying on the counter, but not this.

Then the Picky Eater comes home for winter break and informs me that Smitten Kitchen is supposed to have an outstanding honey cake recipe. So, over the weekend I decided to have a rematch with honey cake using the Smitten Kitchen recipe, and must admit that I had better results- added a ton of walnuts to the recipe, under baked it, and gave it a final whiskey marinade. While it didn't break into our top 5 cake list (Zucchini-Orange, Apple-Walnut, Oatmeal, Carrot, Sour Cream Struesel) it was good enough that I didn't feel hesitant about carting it off to a party.

So, here I give you two honey cake recipes. When I recover from my baking coma I will try my grandmother's recipe once again and see if I can do it justice.

Down to the last piece of the  Majestic & Moist Honey Cake

Smitten Kitchen's Majestic and Moist Honey Cake
Adapted from Marcy Goldman’s Treasure of Jewish Holiday Baking

I used my 10" springform pan with a tube insert and it worked perfectly. I suspect that minimizing the diameter of the cake with a tube pan enables you to under bake the cake without being left with a soggy center. As my tube insert has a scalloped bottom, I ignored the directions to line it with parchment paper! Just made sure that it was well greased and floured.

3 1/2 cups (440 grams) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (15 grams) baking powder
1 teaspoon (5 grams) baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
4 teaspoons (about 8 grams) ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup (235 ml) vegetable oil
1 cup (340 grams) honey
1 1/2 cups (300 grams) granulated sugar
1/2 cup (95 grams) brown sugar
3 large eggs at room temperature
1 teaspoon (5 ml) vanilla extract
1 cup warm (235 ml) coffee or strong tea
1/2 cup (120 ml) fresh orange juice
1/2 cup (60 ml) whiskey
1 1/2 cups chopped walnuts (a Travels with the Picky Eater blog addition)

Fits in three loaf pans, two 9-inch square or round cake pans, one 9 or 10 inch tube or bundt cake pan, or one 9 by 13 inch sheet cake.

Preheat oven to 350°F. Generously grease pan(s) with butter and then flour them. For tube or angel food pans, line the bottom with lightly greased parchment paper, cut to fit.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, cloves and allspice. Make a well in the center, and add oil, honey, white sugar, brown sugars, eggs, vanilla, coffee or tea, orange juice and 1/4 cup whiskey. (If you measure your oil before the honey, it will be easier to get all of the honey out.)

Using a strong wire whisk or in an electric mixer on slow speed, stir together well to make a thick, well-blended batter, making sure that no ingredients are stuck to the bottom. Add the chopped walnuts to the batter.

Spoon batter into prepared pan(s).  Place cake pan(s) on two baking sheets, stacked together (this will ensure the cakes bake properly with the bottom baking faster than the cake interior and top).

Bake until cake tests done, that is, it springs back when you gently touch the cake center. For angel and tube cake pans, this will take 60 to 75 minutes, loaf cakes, about 45 to 55 minutes. For sheet style cakes, baking time is 40 to 45 minutes.

Let cake stand fifteen minutes before removing from pan. In the tradition of the Bernice Fine honey cakes, brush the cake(s) with the remaining 1/4 cup of whiskey while still warm.

My grandmother's
secret ingredient.

The Bernice Fine Honey Cake
Makes 2 standard loaf pan cakes

4 eggs
1 cup sugar
1 cup honey
3/4 cup strong coffee, cooled (I can just see my grandmother pouring out the dregs from her morning Sunbeam percolator brew.)
1/2 cup brandy or whiskey
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
4 cups flour
1 tsp. allspice
1/2 tsp. salt
2 cups walnuts, chopped
1/2 cup butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Butter and flour two loaf pans and line the bottoms with buttered parchment paper (my grandmother used waxed paper- bleh!!)

Beat the eggs and sugar together well. Add the honey and beat again until well blended. Sift the baing powder, baking soda, flour, allspice & salt  together. Stir 1/4 cup of the flour mixture into the chopped nuts. Stir together the coffee and 1/4 cup of the liquor.

Add the remaining dry ingredients to the egg mixture alternately with the liquid- 1/3 flour, 1/2 liquid, 1/3 flour, 1/2 liquid, 1/3 flour - beating only until just mixed together. Stir in the floured nuts and then the butter.

Divide the batter between the two prepared pans. Bake for about 1 hour, until the cake is firm in the center and has started to pull away from the sides of the pan. Turn out from the baking pans after 15 minutes and brush with the remaining 1/4 cup liquor. When cool, wrap the cakes individually in foil and allow to age at least 24 hours.

Honey cakes waiting for their dousing with Jim Beam.

To redeem my grandmother's reputation, I offer our family Mandelbrodt (literally "Almond Bread") recipe. The Jewish version of biscotti, moister and richer than many biscotti. When we were young my brother loved to stuff as many mandelbrodt as he could into a tall glass, fill it with milk and eat the resulting glop with a spoon. Ah, the simple joys of childhood!

Mandelbrodt, fresh from the oven and waiting for an encounter with a glass of milk.

Mandelbrodt
Makes about 3 dozen cookies

3 eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup (or more) toasted almonds, coarsely chopped
1/2 tsp. vanilla
3 cups flour
2 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
whole raw almonds

Preheat the oven to 350  degrees. Butter two cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper.

Beat together the eggs, sugar, vanilla, and oil until well blended. Mix in the chopped almonds. Sift/stir the salt, flour and baking powder together, and then add to the eggs mixture, beating only until just combined. The dough will be wet, but should be solid enough to form loaves.

With floured hands, form long narrow loaves on the cookie sheets, adding a little additional flour if necessary. They should be about 1 1/2 inches high and 2 1/2 - 3 inches wide. Make sure that there is 1-2 inches space between the loaves so that they have room to spread. Push raw almonds into the top of the dough in the direction of the width of the loaves at 1 inch intervals.

Unbaked loaves ready for the oven.

Bake for 25 - 30 minutes, until the loaves are lightly browned on the edges. Immediately cut into 1 1/2 inch wide slices, cutting between the almonds on top. Turn each cookie on its side on the cookie sheet and return to the oven until lightly browned, about another 20 - 25 minutes.

Holiday Yeast Baking- Panettone & more!

I managed to outdo myself in the baking department this holiday season! Here's a list of everything I baked post-Thanksgiving:

My Grandmother's Honey Cake
Mandelbrot (Jewish almond biscotti)
Chocolate Pretzels (better the next day)
4 double recipes of Gingerbread Cookie dough
1 Gingerbread house
3 Gingerbread family portraits
3 dozen Dinner Rolls
2 Panettone
6 doz Chocolate Cookies
a double recipe of Gayle's Apricot Chocolate Fruitcake
2 doz molded Springerle on edible rice paper
3 doz Brownies

I really didn't intend to bake so many things, but sometimes one thing leads to another ..... and you want to make what you know your friends and family will enjoy during the holidays. Certainly by the new year everyone is ready to cut back and abstain for a while, but my fans have requested a panettone blog, so here it is! I will tackle the rest of my holiday endeavors in another post.

On Christmas day we had the pleasure of sharing dinner with our friend Bill, an amazing nonagenarian (ninety plus years), his granddaughter Ilaria, and her boyfriend Ramon. Bill recently had to have a redo on his hip replacement and is currently housebound, which is not his usual state of affairs. Ilaria's mother Ann  (of lemon risotto fame) grew up in Palo Alto, but has lived in Italy for almost fifty years, since marrying her husband, Pier Paolo. When Ilaria and I were discussing our dinner menu, she mentioned panettone, which is traditional for an Italian Christmas. Inspired by a recent day of baking with my friend Robert, an ardent Italian baker, I managed to squeeze the panettone in between the San Francisco Smuin Ballet overnight field trip and the Christmas Eve trip to Modesto, but ended up starting it's final rise about 2 am on Christmas morning.

Enthralled with the new edition of Carol Field's The Italian Baker, I decided to step up to the challenge of her classic recipe for panettone, despite the triple rise requirement. All went fairly well, although the dough did seem a bit slow to rise, until my fateful 2 am assignation. Unfortunately, a little mouse with the initials T.P.E. had been into my raisin supply, and when it came time to add the dried fruit and flavorings prior to the final rise, I appeared to be a day late and a dollar short, as it were. And, even I was unwilling to venture out to find an open grocery store at that time of the night (day?) on Christmas! Rifling through the cupboards and freezer I managed to assemble a combination of chopped dried cherries and peaches, blanched almonds, and a few sad looking raisins. Good thing that I had rushed out to Sur La Table on Christmas Eve for the paper panettone molds! As usual with an adhoc recipe adjustment, the results were pretty yummy!

This recipe is excruciatingly long, so bear with me, and know that the results are worth the effort. (On this the Picky Eater agrees with me. Of course, she wasn't the one doing the grunt work, she just did the eating.) Read through the entire recipe before you begin so that you can plan your timing for this. There are several potential resting points when the dough can be refrigerated for hours, overnight, or longer. You can mix this dough by hand, but I wouldn't think of doing it without the assistance of my trusty Kitchen Aid mixer.

Panettone adapted from The Italian Baker
Makes 2 panetonni
Sponge
2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast (one of the triplet packets you get at the grocery store)
1/3 c. warm water
1/2 c. unbleached flour
Stir the yeast into the water in a small bowl; let it stand until it looks creamy, about 10 minutes. Stir in the flour and cover the bowl tightly with plastic wrap. Let the sponge rise until doubled, about 20-30 minutes.
First Dough
2 1/4 tsp. dry yeast (2nd of triplet packets)
3 Tb warm water
2 large eggs, at room temperature (very important! The dough needs to stay warm)
1/4 c. sugar
4 oz (one stick) unsalted butter, also at room temperature (see admonition above)
In the bowl of an electric mixer, stir the yeast into the water and let it stand until creamy, again about 10 minutes. Add the sponge, eggs, flour, and sugar and mix with the flat paddle attachment. Cut the butter into smallish chunks, add it to the dough, and mix until the dough is smooth, about 3 inutes. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled, about 1 - 1 1/4 hours. (Please be patient here! It may take longer, but make sure that the dough does actually double.)
Second Dough
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
3/4 c. sugar
2 TB honey
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
1 tsp salt
8 oz (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 c. unbleached flour
Using the mixer again, add the eggs, egg yolks, sugar, honey, vanilla, and salt to the first dough and mix well with the paddle attachment. Add the additional butter and mix until smooth. Add the flour and mix until even smmother. The dough will be soft. Change to the mixer's dough hook attachment and knead on medium low speed until smooth and soft, about 2 minutes. Finish by kneading the dough on a lightly floured board, using as little additional flour as necessary.
First "Official" Rise
Place the dough in a largish size lightly oiled bowl, cover tightly with plastic, and let rise until tripled, 2 1/2 - 4 hours. It can also rise overnight at a cool room temperature (65-68 degrees- No, the refrigerator is too cold.)
Filling
1 2/3 c. golden raisins (or, in my case the equivalent mixture of dried fruits- peaches, apricots, cherries would all be good, plus
1/2 c. blanched almonds, if you happen to have some kicking around
1/2 c. chopped candied orange peel (Luckily, The Picky Eater had just made me a batch from this Smitten Kitchen recipe (sans the chocolate) http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2006/11/candy-girl/
Grated zest of 1 orange & 1 lemon
2-3 TB unbleached flour
About 30 minutes before the end of the first rise, soak the dried fruits in cool water. Drain and pat dry. Cut the dough in half on a floured surface. Toss the dried fruits, nuts, and citrus peel together with the 2-3 TB of flour. Pat each piece of dough into an oval and sprinkle with a quarter of the fruit mixture. Roll each piece up into a log, then gently flatten each one again to create as much surface area as possible, sprinkle with the rest of the fruit mixture and roll them up again.
Shaping & the Second Rise
Shape each dough log into a ball and slip them into well-buttered 6" x 4" paper panettone molds or 6" high (2 pound) buttered coffee cans lined on the bottom with parchment paper. (These can also be baked in 2-quart size souffle dishes or a springform pan, but they will not rise as high or be as lightly textured.
Cut an "X" in the top of each loaf with a pair of floured kitchen scissors. Cover the loaves with a towel and let them rise until doubled, at least 2 hours (and maybe more.) You might want to turn your oven on to warm up your kitchen a bit.
Baking
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Place the loaves on a baking sheet, recut the the "X"s, and place the baking sheet on the middle rack of the oven. After 10 minutes, turn the oven temperature down to 350 degrees and bake until a bamboo skewer comes out clean when inserted in the middle, at least 30 - 40 minutes longer. (Check on the baking after about 30 minutes- you may need to cover the loaf tops with foil to keep them from browning too much.)
Cool the loaves on a rack for 30 minutes. To prevent the panettoni from collapsing, lay them on their sides on a pillow covered with a towel until they are completely cool- as is if they are in paper molds or unmolded if baked in coffee cans or pans.
Rumor had it that panettone is actually better on the second day, and believe it or not, it is. Wrap tightly in plastic and keep at room temperature for up to three days (if it lasts that long!)

Panettoni resting on a pillow awaiting ingestion

If you want to experiment with something a little less strenuous but also tasty, try this chocolate panettone. The best batch I ever made was the one where I miscalculated and doubled the eggs and butter!

Chocolate Almond Panettone
Makes 2 loaves.
4 c. flour
1/2 c. sugar
1 pkg. yeast (2 1/4 tsp as in the previous recipe)
3/4 t. salt
3/4 c. milk
1/4 c. water
1/2 c. butter, cut in pieces
4 eggs
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1/2 c. blanched almonds, chopped & toasted

In a large mixer bowl, combine 1 1/2 c. flour, the sugar yeast, and salt. Heat the milk, butter, and 1/4 c. water until warm. Gradually add liquid to the dry ingredients. Beat 2 minutes at medium speed. Add 3 eggs and 1/2 c. flour, beat 2 minutes at high speed. By hand, stir in enough flour to make a stiff batter ( may take more than 4 c. total).
Cover, and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1 hour. Stir the batter down with a spoon. Add the chocolate chips and almonds. Divide batter in half; put each half in a well-greased 14-16 oz. coffee can. (We have also been known to bake these in buttered unused flower pots with a piece of foil covering the drainage hole.)
Cover, and let rise again until the batter comes within 1/2” of the rim, about 30-45 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 350°.
Beat remaining egg with 1 Tb water, brush over top of dough. Bake on the lowest oven rack for 35 minutes, or until done. Let loaves cool in cans 5 minutes, remove from cans and cool completely on a rack.

One final word on panettone. One of our favorite stories when The Picky Eater was small was Tony's Bread, Tomie de Paola's version of the origins of panettone, as the story goes, created by a simple village baker to impress the sophisticated palates of Milano when he and his beautiful daughter join her besotted noble fiance there.
Basta on panettone!! Let me share with you our traditional dinner roll recipe, baked religiously (probably the only "religious" thing that I do) for all major holiday meals. Take my advice- make a double recipe and save 1/3 of it for cinnamon rolls the next day!

Ultimate Dinner Rolls
I am generally opposed to the America’s Test Kitchen philosophy, but sometimes that crew really hits the mark – as in this case.
(Note: America’s Test Kitchen recommends making the dough two days ahead, forming the rolls, and letting them refrigerate for 24-48 hours. If you have room in your refrigerator!)

¾ c. whole milk
8 Tb butter, melted
6 Tb sugar
1 ½ t. salt
2 eggs, room temperature
2 ¼ t. rapid rise yeast
3 1/2 c. unbleached flour
Warm the milk and 6 Tb butter together. Pour into the bowl of an electric mixer and add the sugar and salt. Let cool to 90-100˚, then whisk in eggs and yeast until combined.
Add the flour to the bowl and use the dough hook to mix it on low speed until it is combined. Increase the speed to medium low and knead the dough about 3 -5 minutes more. The dough should still be moist, but not sticky. Add a couple more tablespoons of flour if it still feels sticky. Continue to knead for about 5 minutes longer, until a cohesive elastic dough has formed.
Transfer the dough to a floured work surface and knead by hand for 1-2 minutes. Butter the interior of a medium size bowl, form the dough into a ball, and place it in the bowl. Rub the top of the ball with a bit of butter. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm draft-free location until doubled in volume, 2-3 hours.
Punch the dough down with your fist, and let it rest about 10 minutes. Form into the roll shape of your choice. (We like snail rolls – divide one recipe of dough into 16 pieces, roll each into an 8" long snake and twist up into a snail. See them in the picture of the resting panettoni.)  Place the rolls on a lightly buttered cake pan or cookie sheet, cover lightly with a buttered sheet of wax paper, and then cover that with plastic wrap. Refrigerate 24-48 hours.
The day you plan to serve the rolls, remove the plastic wrap from the pan and let the rolls rise in a cool room temperature location for 6-7 hours, until doubled in volume. Adjust the oven rack to the lower-middle position and preheat the oven to 400˚. Melt the remaining 2 Tb of butter and brush the rolls. Bake until deep golden brown, about 14-18 minutes. Serve warm.
Alternately, for making rolls on the same day, you can punch the dough down after the first rise, form the rolls as explained above. Let them rise until doubled, about 2 hours, and bake.
Makes 16 rolls. (From Cook’s Illustrated, Sept-Oct. 2006)

Day After Cinnamon Rolls
I usually get up early and start these rising before everyone else gets up on Christmas morning.
Makes 8 rolls
1/2 recipe of Ultimate Dinner Roll dough
1/2 c. sugar
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 c. butter, melted
Optional: 1/2 c. raisins (only if you love them)
Icing
4 TB (1/2 stick) butter, softened
2 c. powdered sugar
4 TB milk or cream
1/2 tsp vanilla

Punch the dough down on a lightly floured board or piece of parchment paper while you stir the sugar & cinnamon together, adding more cinnamon to taste if desired. Roll the dough into a rectangle about 10" wide and 6" tall. Brush the dough with the melted butter and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar and raisins (if you're using them.) Start rolling the dough along the long side into a 10" log, pressing firmly as you roll. Cut the log into 8 equal pinwheel slices and arrange them in a buttered standard size pie plate.

Unbaked rolls rising nicely

Cover lightly with a sheet of plastic wrap and put in a warm place to rise until doubled (or maybe 1 1/2 times if you can't wait.)
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees and mix the icing ingredients together. Bake the cinnamon rolls for about 15 - 20 minutes, until golden brown on top. Spread the icing over them while they are still warm, it will melt and ooze all over them. To avoid mouth burns, try to wait it until they have cooled a little before eating. Best eaten the day that they are baked.