Redeemed Sticky Rolls

[This post is included in this week's Real Food Wednesday, hosted by Kelly the Kitchen Kop!]

As I mentioned, Saturday was my birthday. For the occasion, I decided to try out a new, made up recipe to "fix" the old family recipe of "sticky rolls". They are a staple at holiday gatherings, and a large part of what my childhood tastes like. But they're usually made with canned biscuits and lots of refined sugar. But since I try to eat real food these days, that doesn't really fly anymore.

So, because Redeemed Sticky Rolls are indeed a success (yay!), I will now give you a step-by-step tutorial for making your very own Redeemed Sticky Rolls.

1.) Make this biscuit recipe. Do everything except baking them. This will take you approximately 2 1/2 to 3 hours. Cut out the biscuits to be about the size of biscuits from a can.

[Biscuits after rising]

2.) Melt some butter in a saucepan.


3.) Add a heap of cinnamon.


4.) Stir.


5.) Dump some Sucanat (dehydrated cane sugar) into a bowl. Take the risen-but-yet-unbaked biscuits, dip them in the cinnamon-butter, then roll them around in the Sucanat, one at a time. Twist the biscuits a little, then shove them close together onto a cookie sheet or shallow baking dish.


6.) Melt some more butter and add more cinnamon because you didn't make enough. (I ended up using about 10 tablespoons of butter for one recipe of the biscuits.)


[6b.) Decide half-way through that the Sucanat will be too much sugar and start leaving it out and only dipping the biscuits in cinnamon-butter. Realize later that the Sucanat was just right and that next time you'll dip all of them in Sucanat.]


7.) Put biscuits in a 350 degree oven for 20-25 minutes while you continue watching Pirates of the Caribbean, being reminded of what a fabulous movie it is (and with such great pacing!), and laughing at all the funny parts even though you've seen it about 25 times.


8.) Mix up the glaze/drizzle/icing. That's heavy whipping cream, plus enough maple syrup for the cream to taste sweet.


9.) Spoon onto still-hot biscuits.


[9b.) If it happens to be your birthday, stick a candle in one of the sticky rolls, light it, and command your husband to take photos. Also, try to keep your one-year-old from grabbing the lit candle.]


10.) Enjoy!

[Oh yeah, don't forget to lick some extra drizzle from the pan!]

What's Going On

I'm neglecting my blog, that's what!

I just don't have all that much to talk about, ya know? I mean, if you're here with me, I'll talk your ear off (probably about Lucy). But not a lot of posting material.

For about the last month, I've been spending any and all crafting time make more of these.


They seem to take forever to make, but I'm so proud of the design, I want to be able to share them with everyone.

And I haven't really been making anything new and different in the kitchen. Just more of the same. Rice. Peanut butter balls. Cheese crackers.

But -- tomorrow is my birthday! And for the occasion I plan to try to redeem one of our old family recipes: sticky rolls. Sticky rolls are biscuits from a can, dipped in melted butter, rolled in cinnamon-sugar, twisted, and shoved together in a pan to bake. Then they get covered in a milk-vanilla-powdered-sugar glaze.

Aaaand that's why I haven't made any in a very long time. Canned biscuits = trans fats, and white sugar AND powdered sugar in the same recipe?? Yikes.

So, check back next week, when I will explain how I made the Redeemed Sticky Rolls, whether or not they turned out, and whether or not I remembered to take photos while I was making them. :-)

Oh, also I'm having a sale in my supply shop. I'm adding new things to the sale every day, so you might want to check that out. If you're into that kind of thing.

Art Museum

On Thursday Norman, Lucy, and I took a field trip to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. We went because they have a traveling exhibit of movie costumes called Sketch to Screen. It's leaving August 15, so we just barely made it!

Unfortunately for everyone, the museum did not allow any photography in the Sketch to Screen exhibit. (Booooo!) Otherwise, trust me, you'd be looking at the photos right now. They had some super-cool stuff. Some Gone With the Wind dress reproductions, a shirt worn by John Wayne, a dress from one of the Mummy movies in two versions (before and after the action sequence), Wolverine's X-Men uniform (hubba hubba), and some dresses from Titanic, among quite a number of other things.

The item I found the absolute coolest though, was Atticus Finch's briefcase (bag? more like a messenger bag), glasses, and glasses case from To Kill a Mockingbird. I haven't even seen the movie, but I wanted to just stand there all day and stare at it.

They also had an outfit worn by Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain. I had a tough time with this. I couldn't really look at it, and I teared up. Weird, right? I mean, at least half the items in the collection were worn by people who are now dead. I'm not ashamed to say, I'm still working through Heath Ledger's untimely death. It really affected me.


The other thing that stood out to me was how the "greats" (at anything, really) do their best and don't cut any corners. One of the dresses from Titanic (the one Rose is wearing when she and Jack stand at the bow of the ship) was situated so you could see the front and the back. In case you weren't a teenage girl when the movie came out and didn't see in 100 times in the theater, I'll remind you that the dress is a deep blue with embroidery on the chest. Well guess what? There's also embroidery on the back toward the bottom. It's kind of peaking out from beneath another layer of fabric. This struck me as crazy. No one was going to see it! But you know what? Someone did see it. I saw it. And it reminded me that if I'm gonna do something, I should do it. Because eventually, someone is going to see it.

UPDATE: Not 5 hours after finishing this post I happened across this website (while looking at something else), which has photos someone took of the dress at another exhibit. Here's what I was talking about:

[See?]

[Oh yeah, there was also Skeletor.]

I didn't get to linger at Sketch to Screen as long as I would have liked, but such is the life of the mother of a toddler. But since we'd already paid $20 to get into the museum, we thought we'd check out another exhibition that had been recommended to us: a collection of hand-blown glass by artist Dale Chihuly. (Whom we lovingly call "Dale Cthulhu", of course.)

Soooo gorgeous! The collection is dimly lit, and the only light shines on and through the pieces of glass and it's just lovely. Poor Lucy wanted to get down, look around, and touch everything, but as I told her, it was approximately the very last place in the world where she could get down.

[Norman took this photo. Doesn't he have quite the eye?]

When we came upon this section of the exhibit, I just knew we had to nurse here. It had been awhile anyway, and how could I resist? A room with a cozy little corner, where the only things to look at are on the ceiling? Perfect! Plus it's World Breastfeeding Week, and this is how we observe. :-)