Recipe from the “Old Hippie Cookbook Forum”: www.oldhippie.com/forums/cookbook/
When I was a kid — we lived in San Marcos, TX where we had a huge pecan tree in the front yard. Everyday we kids would go and pick up the dropped pecans for my ma to use in cooking.
We were pretty poor and didn’t eat real well — but Sunday morning was the best meal of the week. After returning from St. John’s — my Dad would fry a pound of bacon and cook a dozen fried eggs in the grease while we kids would make a loaf (they were shorter then) of toast from “Day Old” bread (10 cents a loaf for day old compared to 12 cents for fresh), and occasionally a loaf of raisin toast. Occasionally my mother would make Cariocas — which was a WWI invention my Grandfather from Venezuela started as a tradition. I need to do a recipe for that some day.
About once a month, we would replace the toast and eggs on Sunday breakfast with my mother making Pecan Cinnamon rolls — starting the night before.
She would start the night before with making the bread dough — but today we can buy frozen bread dough — making the job a lot easier. Here’s how I do it a couple of times a year for my family. It makes two cookie sheets worth (about 24 good size rolls total).
Start the day before
- Buy three loafs of frozen bread dough and let thaw and rise in a huge plastic bowl that was wiped with a paper towel soaked in vegetable oil — to keep the dough from sticking to the bowl. This takes about 6 hours at room temperature.
- Once the dough as thawed and risen a little, plop onto a clean and floured counter and cut in half. This process takes about an hour, so I start about an hour before bed time for all of the timing to work out for the best size and freshest tasting.
- Pound/kneed the dough and shape each half into a pair of rectangles about 18″ long by 6″ wide 1/4 thick.
- Spread a layer of dark brown sugar on each.
- Shake a liberal (man I hate that word) amount of ground cinnamon on top of the brown sugar.
- Spread a layer of chopped pecans
- Half of us love raisins, and half do not — so on one I sprinkle raisins
- Tightly roll into a long roll, and cut into 12 slices per roll. Carefully arrange slices on a greased (I spray with Pam — but my mother would use a stick of butter — mmmmmm) 4 rows by 3 rows spaced to allow for them to triple in size (just touching each other) when they rise overnight. Spray the tops with Pam (to keep plastic wrap from sticking) and lay a piece of Saran Wrap in top to keep moist (and slightly slow down the rate they rise) while the rolls rise.
- Let them rise overnight (about 6-7 hours), and in the morning remove the plastic wrap off the top, and bake in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. The key is for them to get golden brown on top — so watch through the oven glass at about 10 minutes as you don’t want to under or over bake. They will burn quickly after turning golden brown so be careful.
- Spread a frosting made of powder sugar and water once they’ve cooled enough melt the frosting evenly — but not too hot to where the frosting melts to clear. Optionally (my mother did this) chop a jar of Maraschino cherries and mix it and the syrup of the car into the frosting.
Damn — just writing this has me Jonesing!
