Make a soft biscuit dough; then put on a well-floured baking-board and roll out one-half inch thick. Sprinkle with sugar, cinnamon and grated lemon peel and pour over some melted butter. Then roll up the dough and cut into inch thick slices; lay in a well-buttered baking-pan and let bake in a hot oven until done.
This is a cinnamon roll built on baking-powder biscuit dough rather than yeast, and the original assumes you know the biscuit formula by heart. The proportions below fill in what the book leaves out.
- "A soft biscuit dough"In a 1900s American cookbook this means roughly 2 cups flour, 4 teaspoons baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 3-4 tablespoons butter or lard cut in, and about 3/4 cup milk — wet enough to be sticky, not stiff. Handle it as little as possible.
- A hot ovenRoughly 400-425F. Biscuit dough needs the initial blast to set the layers before the butter runs out. Figure 15-20 minutes.
- Filling quantitiesFor that much dough, about 1/3 cup sugar, 1-2 teaspoons cinnamon, the zest of one lemon, and 3 tablespoons melted butter. Pour the butter on last so it does not dissolve the sugar into syrup that leaks out.
- Grated lemon peelZest only, no white pith. Modern lemons are often waxed, so scrub them in warm water first.
- SlicingInch-thick slices from a soft dough tear easily. Use a serrated knife with a sawing motion, or a length of unflavored dental floss pulled through the roll.
- Baking-panSet the slices cut side up and just touching in a buttered 8- or 9-inch round or square pan. Crowding them keeps the sides soft and the spiral from unwinding.
- "Until done"The tops should be well browned and the center roll dry when probed; a wet middle here means raw dough, not underbaked custard. Yield is about 9 or 10 rolls.
- TimingChemically leavened dough starts working the moment the milk goes in. Mix, roll, fill and bake without pauses — this is not a dough to leave sitting while the oven heats.
Rolled sweet doughs of this kind run through Dutch and German baking as kaneelbroodjes and Zimtschnecken, and the version here uses a quick biscuit dough leavened with baking powder. The lemon peel is the older touch, a sweet-spice partner to cinnamon in northern European baking long before vanilla extract became commonplace. Books like this one parcel out a year of dishes one nation at a time, so here the flavoring stays Dutch while the technique is American.