Poinsettia Puffs with Rhodes Bake-N-Serv

As if my creative juices aren’t flowing enough this time of year, I was contacted by a representative at Rhodes Bake-N-Serv and asked if I was interested in creating a blog post based on a recipe I make with their products. I’m always up for a challenge, and it doesn’t hurt me to partner with a nice company like Rhodes for this post, so of course I said yes and started thinking up ideas.

I wanted to come up with something sweet & savory for my holiday work party and although in my head, my original idea was going to work out perfectly, I wasn’t as prepared with the planning and follow through and ended up going in a different direction.

The holidays are full of sweets, or at least they are with my family – candy filled stocking, cookies in tins for sharing and gift exchanges, pies and bars for dessert. You can’t escape them around me! I thought of a great idea for a sweet roll for Christmas morning that everyone will love and will look just as good as it tastes! Think Cinnamon Roll without the added butter, sugar and fat.

I started with a loaf of the Rhodes Bake-N-Serv white bread and after thawing it, I rolled it out a bit, cut it into 12 pieces and formed rolls out of them. I’m sure the Bake-N-Serv rolls would help speed up this process, but I had bought the loaves for my other concept and wasn’t going to waste it.

After forming the dough into the rolls, I took a pair of scissors and cut into the roll to make 6 slits around it – like cutting into a pie but not all the way through.

Then I took a mixture of decorating sugar (in red) and cinnamon and sprinkled it over the roll. I made sure to get it into the cuts in the roll. Then I placed each roll into a muffin tin (lightly coated with cooking spray) to help them hold their shape.

After letting the dough rise for a half hour, I pushed the end of a wooden spoon into the center of each roll and then popped them in the oven at 350 for 15 – 20 minutes.

I was excited for the outcome and left the oven light on so I could see how they were turning out. Perfectly golden and looking like a flower.

A dollop of butter was added to a few of the rolls in the center, but I didn’t really taste a difference in the finished roll. I would skip this step to help keep these a bit healthier.

And they tasted great! The little sweetness from the sugar, mixed with the cinnamon and yeasty dough really gave me a sweet treat. I put a small spread of butter on each half of my roll, but nothing compared to what you would get in a Cinnabon.

Such a beautiful treat and simple to make on Christmas morning and even the kids can help. Help the children with the scissors or use blunt tip to be safe, but I think the children will enjoy putting the sugar on these treats and being able to say they helped make them.

And these don’t have to just be for the holidays. Use other colored baker’s sugars to create yellow or pink daisies in Spring for Mother’s Day.

Rhodes Bake-N-Serv provided me compensation for a post featuring their product, but the review is my own honest opinion of the product.