Fun with Rhodes frozen bread dough

Well this was kind of a fun project. I've never played with frozen bread dough before. Left it on the counter for 4-5 hours - came home and it was perfectly thawed but still cold enough to handle easily. Both of these recipes are from the Rhodes website and they had a ton of recipes to choose from. These 2 looked good to me. The results were delicious! They aren't the prettiest treats but they taste darn good. My boys (ages 5 & 6) helped with both of these and they had a terrific time doing it. The dough is very easy to deal with and both of these recipes involve easy tasks that young children can do. Rolling out the dough with a rolling pin. Spreading soft butter on the dough. Sprinkling with cinnamon & sugar. Rolling the dough into little balls and dipping in melted butter. Brushing all of the treats with glaze. And of course eating! It was actually kind of exciting for them. One of the recipes calls for the Rhodes dinner rolls. I assume it's the same dough as the frozen bread loaves and that is what I used. This dough rises a lot more than you think it will so my cinnamon twists & my mini monkey breads were totally distorted looking. I would have made my twists a lot thinner and I would not have filled my muffin cups as full (and I used the JUMBO muffin cups - not standard size). So remember that tip if you make either of these. They grow...A LOT!

I used 2 loaves for these recipes. One for the twists & one for the monkey breads.

Great rectangle huh? My 5 year old did it - what do you expect!? The dough rolls out easily but it's rather elastic like so it snaps back to it's original shape quickly.

Oops! Forgot to snap a photo of the twists before they went into the oven! Here they are as they are baking. Look how crowded they are on the cookie sheet. They didn't start out that way. They grew!!

They cooled quickly and I used my pastry brush to glaze them with a rather thick layer of a simple powdered sugar glaze: powdered sugar, half n half & vanilla.

A lot of the butter & cinnamon mixture leaked out and caramelized under the twists. I'm not sure how I would have prevented that. I twisted & twisted but since the dough is kind of elastic, they untwisted themselves slightly.


Mini Monkey Breads below

I think I put about 5 or 6 small rolled balls of dough into each jumbo muffin cup. Either the balls should have been smaller or I should have put about 4 in each cup.

I flipped them out of the muffin tins about 1 or 2 minutes after baking. They slipped right out and were covered with a caramel like sauce on the bottom. Yummy!

I flipped them over - caramel side on the bottom - and brushed glaze on the tops. A LOT of glaze! They are super easy to just pull apart and eat. Super gooey & soft!

Even though the caramel part is now on the bottom, it's not sticky. It kind of hardens into a semisoft caramel like texture that is somewhat slick, but not sticky at all.

The glaze cools and leaves kind of a soft crunchy texture. Kind of like biting into a glazed doughnut.

Cinnamon Twists

rhodesbread.com

Ingredients

8 Rhodes Texas™ Rolls or 12 Rhodes™ Dinner Rolls, thawed and risen
3 tablespoons butter, softened
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup powdered sugar
2 tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Spray board or counter with non-stick cooking spray. Combine rolls to form a ball and roll into a 12x24-inch rectangle. Spread with butter. Mix brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over half of the rectangle (a 12x12-inch square) Fold half with no sugar over sugared half. Cut into twelve 1-inch strips. Twist each strip and place about 1-inch apart on large sprayed baking sheets. Cover with sprayed plastic wrap and let rise 20-30 minutes. Remove wrap and bake at 350° F 15-20 minutes.
Combine powdered sugar, milk and vanilla and mix well. Brush over cooled twists.

Mini Monkey Bread
rhodesbread.com

Ingredients

12 Rhodes™ Dinner rolls, thawed but still cold
6 tablespoons butter, melted
2 tablespoons corn syrup
½ cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

Icing:
1 cup powdered sugar
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1-2 tablespoons milk
½ teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Cut each dinner roll into 6 equal pieces. In a bowl, combine butter and corn syrup and stir until well mixed. In another bowl, combine sugar and cinnamon and mix well. Dip 6 roll pieces at a time in the butter mixture and then in the sugar mixture. Place 6 pieces in each well sprayed cup of a 12 cup muffin tin. Repeat with remaining roll pieces. Cover with sprayed plastic wrap and let double in size. Remove wrap and bake at 350°F 15-20 minutes. Cool 3-4 minutes before removing from pan. Combine icing ingredients and mix well. Drizzle over monkey breads if desired.