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Swedish Rolls
Roll half the mixture for Tea Rolls into an oblong sheet, brush it rather thickly with creamed Snowdrift, dust it plentifully with granulated sugar and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. Dot with halved raisins, roll up, press the edge into the dough, and cut crosswise, like a jelly roll, into half inch slices. Place these, cut side down, on a baking-pan rubbed lightly with Snowdrift, let rise and bake as directed.
A cinnamon-roll variation written as an appendix to another recipe in the same book, so the first job is finding a dough. Everything else is straightforward once you translate the brand name.
- Snowdrift is shorteningSnowdrift was a vegetable (cottonseed oil) shortening sold by the Southern Cotton Oil Company. Any modern vegetable shortening works; softened unsalted butter gives better flavour and browning in the filling.
- "Creamed" means beaten softCreamed Snowdrift is the fat beaten alone until light and spreadable, not melted. Melted fat runs out of the spiral and pools in the pan; a spreadable paste stays put and gives the layers definition.
- You need the Tea Rolls doughThis is half a batch of the book's Tea Rolls; the instruction to let the panned rolls rise indicates a yeast-raised enriched dough. Any sweet-roll or milk-bread dough will substitute; use half of it.
- Slice thicker than half an inchHalf-inch slices give thinner rolls than a modern reader expects; if you prefer a plumper roll, cut them 1 to 1 1/2 inches thick and set them close together in the pan so they support each other as they rise.
- "Let rise" means doubledAfter panning, cover and prove until the rolls are visibly puffed and touching, roughly 30 to 45 minutes in a warm kitchen. The cut faces should look soft and slack rather than tight.
- Oven temperatureThe parent recipe's direction is unstated here; sweet enriched rolls of this size want 375F to 400F for 18 to 25 minutes, until the tops are deep gold and the centres read about 190F.
- Sugar and cinnamon quantities"Plentifully" and "generous" are the author's only guide. About 1/2 cup granulated sugar and 2 teaspoons cinnamon per half batch is a reasonable reading; brown sugar was not intended but works.
- YieldDepending on the size of the parent batch, half a quantity cut at a workable thickness should give roughly 9 to 12 rolls, enough for a 9-inch round or square pan.
Snowdrift cook books were advertising literature: the Southern Cotton Oil Company published a series of them in the 1910s and 1920s to persuade cooks that cottonseed shortening could stand in for butter and lard in everything from pastry to sweet doughs. The rolls themselves are the cinnamon spiral known in Sweden as the kanelbulle, generally traced to the early twentieth century when white flour, refined sugar and cinnamon all became cheap enough for everyday baking; Swedish immigration to the American Midwest and its bakeries is the usual explanation for how the form reached American cookbooks under the label "Swedish." The Swedish original commonly carries cardamom in the dough or the filling, which this version drops entirely.