Confession time: when a friend recently suggested making Cranberry Orange Rolls as a breakfast dish for our cabin weekend, I didn’t immediately jump at the idea.  I mean, cranberries in January?  I only seem to appreciate cranberries around Thanksgiving, and after that, well, I’m not usually thinking about those tart little fruits.  We typically plan all of our meals for cabin weekends in advance, sharing recipes and making long lists of things we need for our cooking adventures.  So a few days later when my friend texted to tell me she couldn’t find cranberries, I was secretly a little relieved.  I was ready to hit up my recipe stash and find something I considered a more traditional winter staple – warm, doughy, and filled with cinnamon or maple, or even apples.

With my list in hand, I headed to my local co-op where, lo and behold, what did I find staring at me when I walked in?  You guessed it, piles of fresh cranberries.  Fresh organic cranberries.  So I did what any good friend would do and I tucked away my old recipes and I bought those cranberries.

It turns out sometimes friends just know best, because after my first bite of these perfectly tart and sweet rolls, I knew I may have a new favorite breakfast dish.  Traditional cinnamon rolls are great, but these jewel toned beauties are on a whole new level.  The recipe, adapted from Deb Perelman’s amazing blog Smitten Kitchen, is a total keeper.  Lesson number one: always trust your friends. Lesson number two: never count the cranberry out, it just may surprise you!

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Cranberry Orange Rolls

A tart and sweet iced roll, perfect for starting your day out right! This recipe is an overnight recipe so you will need to plan ahead.

Servings 12 rolls

Author Adapted from a recipe by Deb Perelman of Smitten Kitchen

Ingredients

• Dough:
• 4 large egg yolks we saved the whites for an egg bake we made the next day!
• 1 large whole egg
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 6 Tablespoons butter melted
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 3/4 of the zest of one large orange the other 1/4 will be used for the filling
• 3 and 3/4 cups of all purpose flour
• 1 packet of instant rapid rise yeast
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• Filling:
• 1 cup fresh cranberries
• I cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 of the zest of one large orange
• 1 and 1/2 Tablespoons of butter
• Icing:
• 3 and 1/2 Tablespoon of freshly squeezed orange juice
• 2 cups powdered sugar

Instructions

1. Place egg yolks, whole egg, sugar, butter, buttermilk and 3/4 of the orange zest of one large orange into the bowl of a stand mixer.
2. Whisk ingredients together until well combined.
3. Add 2 cups of flour, yeast and salt to dough, stir until combined.
4. Switch to the dough hook.
5. Add remaining 1 and 3/4 cups of flour and knead dough for 5-10 minutes.
6. Scrape dough into a oiled bowl and cover with plastic wrap.
7. Allow to rise until doubled (approximately 2 and 1/2 hours).
8. In a food processor, pulse the cranberries with the brown sugar and leftover orange zest (1/4 of total orange zest from large orange) until coarse. (you may need to scrape the sides of the food processor with a spatula until all of the cranberries are coarsely chopped).
9. Melt the butter and set aside.
10. Butter a 9x13 inch baking dish.
11. Roll the dough out on a lightly floured countertop until it is a 18 inch by 12 inch rectangle.
12. Brush the dough with the melted butter.
13. Spread the cranberry-brown sugar-orange zest mixture over the dough.
14. Roll the dough into a long log, being careful to keep the cranberry mixture inside the dough.
15. Cut the log into sections, halving the log until you have 12 even sections.
16. Carefully arrange the sections in the baking dish, with even spacing between them.
17. Cover with plastic wrap and place baking dish into refrigerator (to rise overnight).
18. The next morning take rolls out of the refrigerator and allow to warm to room temperature for at least 30 minutes.
19. Preheat oven to 350°F.
20. Bake rolls until golden, approximately 30 minutes.
21. Whisk the orange juice with the powdered sugar until smooth.
22. Spread the icing over the warm buns.
23. Serve and enjoy!