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Nut and Raisin Rolls
2 1/2 cups flour 4 teaspoons Royal Baking Powder 1/2 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon sugar 5 tablespoons shortening 1 egg 2/3 cup milk butter raisins chopped nuts 1/2 cup sugar Sift flour, baking powder, salt and sugar together. Add melted shortening and beaten egg to milk and add to dry ingredients, mixing well. Turn out on floured board and knead lightly. Roll out very thin. Spread with butter and sprinkle with raisins, chopped nuts and small amount of granulated sugar. Cut into about 4-inch squares. Roll up each as for jelly roll. Press edges together. Brush over with yolk of egg mixed with a little cold water and sprinkle with nuts and sugar, and allow to stand in greased pan about 15 minutes. Bake in moderate oven from 20 to 25 minutes.
A baking-powder dough handled like a yeast dough: rolled thin, filled, and coiled. The whole thing depends on keeping the dough cold and thin, since there is no fermentation to develop it.
- Roll thin, and mean it"Very thin" is about 1/8 inch. A thick sheet will not coil tightly and the centre of each roll stays doughy while the outside browns.
- The unmeasured fillingButter, raisins and chopped nuts are given without quantities. For this amount of dough, figure roughly 3 tablespoons softened butter, 2/3 cup raisins and 2/3 cup nuts. The 1/2 cup sugar in the ingredient list is the filling and topping sugar, despite the instruction to sprinkle only "a small amount" — use it sparingly inside and save the rest for the tops.
- Moderate ovenAbout 350F (period "moderate" ran roughly 350 to 375F). At that temperature 20 to 25 minutes is right for rolls of this size; if the tops are pale at 25 minutes, give them a few minutes more rather than raising the heat, or the sugar on top will scorch.
- ShorteningPeriod shortening means lard or a hydrogenated vegetable fat. Melted butter works and tastes better here; because it is melted rather than cut in, the crumb comes out tender and cakey rather than flaky.
- Knead lightlySix or eight folds, no more. This is a biscuit dough with an egg in it, and extended kneading turns the rolls tough and bready.
- The 15-minute standWith modern double-acting baking powder the rest costs nothing and helps the dough relax. Royal in this period was a cream-of-tartar powder that began working the moment it met the liquid, so the rest would have traded some lift for shape.
- Egg washOne yolk with a teaspoon of cold water is plenty for a dozen rolls. Brush lightly; pooled yolk in the seams sets sticky.
- YieldAbout 12 rolls from 4-inch squares, more if you cut smaller. Best within a few hours of baking — chemically leavened rolls stale quickly.
This comes from one of the cookbooks published by the Royal Baking Powder Company, which for decades gave away recipe booklets whose real purpose was to put its own tin in every kitchen — hence the brand name written into the ingredient list rather than a plain "baking powder." Royal made its powder with cream of tartar, a by-product of winemaking, and defended that formula loudly against the cheaper alum and phosphate powders of its competitors in advertising campaigns that ran for years. The recipe itself shows what chemical leavening was for: a filled, coiled sweet roll of the kind that would otherwise need a yeast sponge and several hours, here mixed, shaped and baked inside an hour. Cinnamon-roll construction without the waiting was exactly the promise these booklets were selling.