*Pumpkin Sweet Rolls

This. Right here. This is a Pumpkin Sweet Roll. Mmm... so good. Anyone who knows me, knows I'm a sucker for pumpkin. So yesterday, when I had an abundance of bread dough sitting around, I contemplated the many possibilities for utilizing the dough. The thing I love to do with a double batch of dough is to make a variety of rolls, including sweet rolls. I don't have a separate recipe for my rolls; I make everything from the same one.

As I promised in my blog entry about Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls, today I am giving you the directions to make Pumpkin Sweet Rolls. Same recipe, just an addition for the pumpkin filling.

It occurred to me yesterday that incorporating pumpkin into a sweet roll would be awesome, and I was right. As I'm writing this, I'm realizing the PERFECT filling would have been Pumpkin Butter. My sister gave me some as a gift for THANKSMAS, but I'm so unaccustomed to having a delicacy like that in the kitchen, that wonderful thought escaped me.

So while the dough was rising, I prepared the pumpkin filling for the rolls.  

Love my mega-sized Tupperware bowl for just this sort of occasion!

The pumpkin filling was easy:  stir together one cup of pumpkin, 1/2 teaspoon each of pumpkin pie spice and cinnamon, and 1/4 c. brown sugar, and 1/4 c. stevia.  You probably noticed my ultra-cool spoon. It's a special spoon I customized myself by getting the spoon too close to a blender blade. It's great for scraping the bottom of containers now, so you might want to make one, too.

Roll the dough into a rectangle shape.  If you're like me, and one side doesn't match the other, simply use a pizza cutter to remove the offending lopsided part.  You're welcome.

Spread the pumpkin filling evenly on the rectangle of dough.

Roll up the rectangle to make a cylinder, then slice the dough into segments. My handy-dandy tip for doing this easily? Slip a longish piece of dental floss under the cylinder of dough, and cut the slices using the floss. Floss or thread keeps the shape rounder, where a knife flattens the pieces. Now, you, like me, can tell the hygienist you have been using your floss between visits to the dentist.

Arrange the rolls on an oiled cookie sheet allowing the sides to have space to rise. Let the rolls rise for 15 minutes while preheating the oven to 400 degrees.

Brush the baked rolls with a light coating of melted butter unless you're going to frost them after cooling. I like to store mine in an airtight container, and frost them after freshening them in the microwave for 10 seconds right before eating them. Perfection!  

You can frost them with cream cheese frosting or a glaze. This time, I used one of the caramel frosting flavor packets found in the baking aisle of the grocery store. I added the caramel flavor to my homemade frosting. The caramel frosting was exactly what I wanted!  

Click this link: WHOLE WHEAT DINNER ROLLS to use my roll recipe, or you can adapt your favorite recipe to make these delicious delicacies.