Simple Orange Rolls

I love a good cinnamon roll in the morning, but they tend to make me want to curl up on the couch with a cup of coffee, a good book, and a blanket, rather than waking me up and preparing me for a long busy day. These orange rolls are an excellent middle ground: still warm, gooey, and sweet, but not so reminiscent of the weekend that they are inappropriate (and even somewhat depressing) on a Monday. What makes these rolls even more weekday-appropriate is their simplicity: a tube of french bread dough, a block of cream cheese, an orange, some sugar, and you're done. Start them before you get in the shower and they'll be ready when you're done--and your house will smell bright and amazing, the best way to start your day.

Here's the recipe, adapted from the December 2008 issue of Southern Living:

Simple Orange Rolls

You'll need 1 orange, a roll of Pillsbury Crusty French Loaf (in a tube next to the biscuits on the refrigerated aisle), a package of block-style cream cheese, butter, light brown sugar, granulated sugar, and powdered sugar.

Set a 4-oz. block of cream cheese (half of a regular 8-0z. package) in a bowl on the counter to soften. You can absolutely use a low-fat cream cheese--I did and the rolls were great. Preheat the oven to 375 F. (You can set the cream cheese on top of the stove to speed up the softening process.) Spray an 8 or 9-inch cake pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside. When the cream cheese is done softening, add 1 1/2 teaspoons of orange zest (about one medium to large orange) and 1/4 cup firmly packed light brown sugar, and beat with a hand mixer until smooth and uniform in color. Unroll the tube of bread dough on a floured surface and spread with the cream cheese mixture, leaving a 1/4-inch border around the edges. Sprinkle this with 2 tablespoons of granulated sugar. Roll the dough, beginning with the long edge. Try to make the roll tight, but not so tight the filling squeezes out. Also, try to keep the width of the roll even. Once you have finished rolling, place the roll seam side down and cut it in half. Cut each of those halves in half, and each of those into three pieces, to make a total of twelve. To cut, saw the sharp knife back and forth; don't just push straight down. Don't worry if the dough smashes down as you cut it--work quickly and reshape the rolls if necessary once they're in the pan. Keep in mind that they will rise and expand as they cook. Place the rolls in the pan, brush the tops with one tablespoon of melted butter, and bake for 30 minutes or until lightly browned on top. When the rolls are done, whisk together 1/2 cup of powdered sugar and 1 tablespoon of orange juice (from the orange you zested earlier). Drizzle this over the hot rolls and serve immediately.

This recipe is so simple, but it uses several techniques that are very important to baking. Here are a few.

Zesting: When you zest the orange, be sure to take off only the zest, none of the bitter white pith. What remains should still be a pale orange, not white. Think about those orange wedges or citrus rings your mother used to put on your plate with breakfast (or at least my mother did). Only the thinnest outer layer is really orange--that's what you want. Remember when you accidentally bit into the tougher white part of the wedge when you were trying to get that last bit of sweet orange flesh? That's what you don't want. (Check out the orange ring in the photo at the top of this post--that orange has been zested already. See how it's still a pale orange? You shouldn't see white when you zest.) You can use a Microplane (my favorite tool), a hand grater (just use the finest holes; you don't want wide strips of orange), or even that strange-looking little zester that came with your bar tools set--you know, the one with the four tiny little holes at the end? That's meant to take off thin strips of citrus zest; just be sure to chop them before you put them in the cream cheese mixture. Though you may love citrus, remember that you only need 1 1/2 teaspoons of orange zest (about one medium orange). As Sabrina tells Linus in the remake of the Hepburn classic, "More isn't always better Linus; sometimes it's just more." In this case, more orange zest just makes the rolls too bright, almost bitter, even if you were careful not to grate into the white pith. And finally, if a recipe calls for both the zest and juice of a fruit, zest it first--the grater needs the firmness of the uncut fruit to zest easily. You can save the fruit if the recipe calls only for zest--just wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and keep it in the fridge. The skin may turn kind of dingy, but the fruit will be fine for awhile.

Softening: Temperature is very important when baking. Cakes and cupcakes usually call for softened butter. This means that the butter (or cream cheese, in this case) should give gentle resistance when you press a fingertip into it--it should yield to the pressure, but your finger should not slip right through the stick. The time it takes for butter or cream cheese to soften depends on the temperature of your room. Or you can try my method: Place the butter on a plate and stick it in an oven that is turned off for about an hour. Or, in a pinch, place the plate in the microwave for about 10 seconds. Remember, you do not want the butter to melt--it should still hold its shape. Properly softened butter will take in plenty of air when you cream it with sugar, and this intake of air is part of what helps cakes to rise and be light and fluffy. The softening in this orange roll recipe is only to help the cream cheese mixture be more spreadable, but it is the same technique you will need when making plenty of other desserts. (Keep in mind also that butter in pastry--pie crusts, for example--must be cold in order to create air pockets when it melts in the oven; this is how pastry becomes flaky. Softened butter in this application would make the pastry chewy, not flaky.)

Measuring dry ingredients: Brown sugar measurements are almost always "packed," meaning you pack the sugar in as you go and it will probably hold its shape when you dump it into the bowl, like making towers of a sand castle in buckets. Granulated sugar is measured by scooping and shaking or leveling off the excess with a knife. Flour is not meant to be packed or scooped. It is best to weigh it using a kitchen scale, but if you don't have a scale or the recipe you're using doesn't give weight measurements, then either spoon the flour lightly into the cup and level it with a knife or scoop the flour out and drop it back into the container several times to lighten it, then scoop and level. You want the flour to be fluffy, not packed. Too much flour will make a recipe dry and dense.