It is a new week and I am excited to continue along with the Brave New Meal cookbook and get back on track with a good recipe. Today I made the orange cinnamon morning rolls.

Because my last yeast dough experience went quite well with the blueberry thyme marble rolls (link here) I was excited for this recipe now. The dough for these rolls has a little more sugar, it also has some cinnamon, ground flaxseed (recipe suggests using golden so they’re more inconspicuous but I just used regular so you can see all the flecks in there) and some orange zest.

Just like with my last dough, I did this one by hand including all the kneading. So again, I got a nice arm workout here. The dough came together really well – I actually think it turned out a little better than my last dough, I’m not sure how but I was very happy with that. I let the dough rise the first time in a bowl and then I formed my rolls. The recipe says at this point you can let them rise the second time in the fridge overnight so I did that.

In the morning, they get brushed with a maple syrup, vegan butter and milk mixture, followed by some sesame seeds. Then they get baked in a 375° oven for 15 to 20 minutes until golden brown. I squeezed all these rolls into one 9-in pan they were so puffy from rising and they did not bake through properly. I left them in a few minutes longer until they looked fully ready.

They did come out nice but they were a little doughy inside from not cooking through evenly. I really liked the sweetness on the top from the maple syrup and the little crunch of the sesame seeds. I definitely should have split them into two pans, maybe even made smaller rolls too, and then bake them like that. I think that would have been perfect.

To serve with these rolls, I made the maple kumquat preserves which is actually just a few recipes away in this cookbook. It was simply just kumquats, sugar, maple syrup and vanilla. That mixture has to boil and then cook down until thick like a jam. It took longer to reduce down than the recipe said – I’m not sure why – but I did get a nice jam consistency in the end. These almost look like candied orange peels and they were getting translucent which was cool to see. This was definitely a sweet jam but it went nicely with the rolls and I like the vanilla flavour in there too.

Overall, not a bad start to the week and I will probably make these again but definitely splitting into two pans.