Caramel Rolls

My mother made the best caramel rolls. She baked bread every week and there were always caramel rolls to come home to. The freshly baked bread may have been enough and there were weeks when that was enough, but it didn't happen often.

This week my niece was looking for Grandma's caramel roll recipe. What? I don't think we have one. We put together two cookbooks with her recipes, and I do not remember seeing a caramel roll recipe in those books or in the recipes we didn't put in there.

So, I checked with the bakers in my family that would know if there was a recipe. My daughter who is the baker in my immediate family. She said, "That is one of my regrets in life, that I didn't pay closer attention to what grandma did when she was making caramel rolls."

Oh my, sorry to have brought that up for her! She was my mother's favorite grandchild. Joanna is my mother's first grandchild. She would say, "All my grandchildren are my favorites," but I could tell.

Next, I tried my brother, and he said, "I think I have that recipe around here somewhere. I may find it in a year or so." The recipe is for his daughter. She probably knew that and that is why she asked me.

He went to cooking school as a younger man, so I'm sure he knows how to make caramel rolls without a recipe. As you may be able to tell, I do not have the recipe and I have never made caramel rolls, except for out of a tube from the grocery store. Why, when I can pick them up from a friend who is a baker.

And that is when I called that friend. She said, "Honey, I am not home right now, and I really don't know exactly what my recipe says. It is important that I stay fairly consistent, so I know I have a recipe. But I have the ingredients listed and probably no measurements. I'm pretty good at putting the right amounts together, after all these years of doing that."

I had to go back to my niece and tell her what I remembered. None of it is probably true. But here goes. She would use the same delicious bread dough recipe that she always used. Unless, of course, she was trying out Auntie Lois, or Auntie Shirley's bread recipes.

After she panned up the bread, and rolls for the week, she would use whatever was left for cinnamon or caramel rolls, depending on what ingredients she had in the cupboard.

She mixed brown sugar, butter, or margarine (remember butter was supposed to be bad for you), and sweetened condensed milk or heavy cream. (heavy cream/butter what's the difference?) and if she had nuts they would go in that mixture too.

She would roll the bread dough in the same cinnamon and sugar mixture we would use for toast. Roll them up and put them in the pan with the caramel mixture. After they raised enough, she would bake them, and you would have delicious caramel rolls.

Then she would make us wait until they cooled just a bit before taking them out of the pan. She would tip the pan upside down, and the caramel would cover the entire roll sometimes. The nuts stayed on top.

My niece thanked me and I wished her well. And then I told her that I think the real reason they were the best is because if you do anything for 52 times a year you will probably get pretty darn good at it too.