Baking Class, Dirty Laundry Style

Big Daddy and I went to a gathering tonight, and we needed to take some snacky stuff, so I decided to go economical and make something with food we already have in the house. Until I get to the grocery store (tomorrow?), that’s not much.

I got out the bread machine and went through my recipes. I am so bad about not following recipes exactly, so here’s what I did. I have a recipe for “Cinnamon Sugar Nuggets” that uses canned bread stick dough. So I found a dough recipe and made that in my bread machine first.

Remember on I Love Lucy when the bread knocks the door open on the oven? Yeah, mine popped the top up on the bread machine while it was rising. I grabbed it out of there to take to my “floured surface,” but I forgot to have floured hands. OOPS. Gummy dough hands. A little warm water took care of that.

Then we flattened out the dough and cut little nuggets to roll in the sugar and cinnamon. And the dough kept growing. So we rolled out little circles and wrapped them around some pepperoni and cheese. Yum. And we still had dough left over. So finally we cut some more nuggets from the remaining dough, and poured melted butter over them, and tossed them with Parmesan cheese and garlic. Those were my favorites.

Oh, and we heated up the kitchen so fierce that I skipped glistening and went straight to sweatin’, y’all. I haven’t used my oven in a month, for that exact reason, but today I made an exception. And had to take another shower because of it.

But dang, people, those nuggets and pepperoni roll-ups sure did taste good!

And since I never use a recipe exactly right, I’m just gonna tell ya how to do this in case you wanna.

Find your favorite roll recipe and make the dough, either in the bread machine, like I did, or the old-fashioned way if that’s how you roll. (Pun intended. Sort of.) After it’s risen, pat your dough out to about 1 inch thick. Use a knife or pizza cutter or whatever and cut long strips, then cut those into 1-inch squares.

Oh yeah, get a plastic container with a lid, and put some sugar and cinnamon in the bottom.

Throw the 1-inch squares into the plastic container, and then when you get tired of cutting, put the lid on there and shake it up until all the nuggets are covered with cinnamon and sugar.

Then cut some more 1-inch squares and put them in another plastic container. Drizzle melted butter over them, and then pour in a truck load of Parmesan cheese and garlic salt or whatever seasoning you think sounds good. Put the lid on, shake it up, blah, blah, blah.

Place the nuggets on a lightly greased cookie sheet and cook until you think they’re done. I think we did 375 for about 8 minutes.

Now, look at the remaining dough and think of other things to do to it. You could take ping pong ball-sized…uh…balls, roll them out flat and put all kinds of good stuff on there, then roll it up. Pepperoni and cheese, ham and cheese, brown sugar and pecans, little smokies, some fruit preserves, whatever sounds good. Lightly greased cookie sheet, 375 until it’s done.

There you have it, boys and girls. Baking class, Dirty Laundry Style.