First of all, I have to apologize for my absence. I’d always planned to take a week and a half off while on vacation, but was forced to take even longer! As soon as I got back to DC, I was hit with a horrible case of the flu. And it pretty much took me a full week to get back to normal.

But now that I’m back, I’m baking like crazy. In fact, I spent the entire day in the kitchen today. I have lots of new recipes to share with you! First up are Raspberry Swirl Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Recipe adapted from here.

Ingredients
Dough-
1 cup milk
2/3 cup sugar
2 packets of active dry yeast
1/2 cup of unsalted butter, at room temperature
2 eggs
4 1/2 cups flour, plus more for kneading

Filling-
1 bag of frozen raspberries, 12 oz.
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon cornstarch

Frosting-
4 ounces cream cheese, room temperature
1 cup powdered sugar
1/4 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Zest of 1 lemon
Juice of half a lemon

1. Put the milk in a small saucepan on the stove and heat until warm. Once it’s warm to the touch, put it in the bowl of your electric mixer. Add the sugar and yeast (just mix this with your spoon). Now, put a towel over the bowl and let it sit for ten minutes until the yeast is foamy.

2. Once it is foamy, add the butter and eggs. I used the paddle attachment to mix this step. Then scrape down the sides and switch to the dough hook. Now add the flour while mixing at a medium speed. A soft dough should form and start to pull away from the sides.

3. Once this happens, increase the speed and continue mixing, I did it for about five more minutes. You want the dough to turn into a small smooth ball.

4. Now transfer the dough to a clean surface dusted with flour (I used a wood cutting board). Knead the dough for a minute or two and shape it into a ball.

5. Now place it in a lightly buttered bowl. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let it rise until doubled in size in a warm place for one to two hours. My apartment was not that warm today, so I turned a burner on for a minute or two until it was warm, and then after turning the burner back off, I set the bowl next to it.

6. While the dough is rising, you can get your pan ready. You want to line the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan with parchment paper, and then butter the top of that parchment paper. When the dough is ready, you want to put it back on your lightly floured surface and roll it out. The dough needed to be so big, that I actually got out a measuring tape to make sure I rolled it out enough. You want it to be a 10×24 inch rectangle.

7. Once the dough is rolled out, go ahead and mix the filling. You want to make sure you wait to take the raspberries out of the freezer until the last minute (if they melt too much things will get REAL messy). Mix the raspberries with sugar and cornstarch in a bowl.

8. Then evenly spread them on the dough (leaving a clean border).

9. Now roll up the dough lengthwise. You want to keep it as tight as possible.

10. Once it is rolled up, cut it into 16 even rolls and place them in the pan (you want one of the cut sides to be face up). Now cover the pan with plastic wrap and let them rise in a warm place until puffy, this should take 1.5 to 2 hours. The berries will melt during this time, but that is okay!

11. Now preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Cover the rolls with foil and bake for 20 minutes. Then take the foil off and bake for another 5 minutes to help brown the top. After they are done, transfer them to a rack to cool.

12. While they cool, make the frosting. You want to place all of your frosting ingredients in a mixer and mix on a high speed until smooth. After the rolls have cooled for about ten minutes, you want to frost them and serve immediately. You can frost whichever side you want, but I thought the bottom side looked the prettiest, so I did that side.

These would be great to serve at a brunch, just make sure to plan ahead because they take a while to make between the two rising times (I served them at 2:30pm today as an afternoon snack, oops).