Mennonite Monday - Caramel Twists

Mennonite Monday started because I wanted to make recipes from the Bethesda Mennonite Church Cookbooks (both the yellow and the white cookbook for those of you who own them). I also wanted to take pictures of each recipe that I made, so I would know for future reference what the recipe should look like. I am by no means a great cook, but I think it will be fun to try new and different recipes each week. Not all of these recipes are for ethnic Mennonite food, but the women from Henderson know how to cook, so I can safely say that these recipes will be good. Check back each Monday for a new recipe and feel free to leave a comment if you have a favorite recipe from these cookbooks, or if you have some tips on what I should make and how I should make it.

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 This week I went out on a limb and made Caramel Twists (pg 16Y).  To be honest, I was nervous that they would be a flop, but they surprisingly turned out very well and the dough was very easy to work with.  It is not hard to understand why they are so good with all the butter and sugar in them.  

Caramel Twists

Mix together: 

9 cups flour

1/2 cup sugar

2 tsp salt

Dissolve: 

2 pkgs of yeast in 1/2 cup water

Add to flour mixture together with:

6 egg yolks beaten and 2 cups warm milk

Mix together until smooth, Cover and refrigerate overnight. 

Caramel coating: 

2 cups margarine

1 cup light corn syrup

3 cups brown sugar

1 cup chopped nuts

When ready to bake Caramel Twists, prepare Caramel coating by melting butter, and sugar and syrup.  Spread in roll pans.  Sprinkle with nuts.  Cut dough into equal parts for easy handling.  Roll each third of dough into rectangle 1/4 inch thick.  Brush center third with soft butter, sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar.  Fold one third of rectangle over center third and sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon.  Fold remaining third over 2 layers.  Cut crosswise into strips 1 inch wide. Grasp ends of strips firmly and twist in opposite directions.  Place in pan about 1 inch apart.  Repeat procedure with rest of dough.  Allow to rise 30 minutes.  Bake in oven at 350 degrees about 25 minutes.  Invert pans immediately on large sheets of foil.  

I always let my yeast soak in the container I measure the water in, so I don't have to make more things dirty. 

Butter for the dough. 

I did choose to cut the butter into the flour by hand, but i'm sure you could use your mixer to do the work. 

Adding the egg yokes. 

The dough is pretty dense when it goes into the refrigerator. 

I made the dough in the morning, so that evening I started my caramel topping. 

This is what the dough looked like after setting in the refrigerator.  Since there was a lot of dough, I decided to experiment a little bit, so I made half that night and I let the other half set in the refrigerator for a few days to see if I could still use the dough if it sat in the refrigerator longer than overnight.  Both sets of dough worked the same, so you can let you dough set as long or as little as you want.  

This dough was the easiest to roll out, of all of the doughs I have worked with so far.  It required very little flour and did not stick to the rolling pan. 

Adding butter to the middle third. 

Adding brown sugar and cinnamon. 

Folding one third over the middle. 

Adding more brown sugar and cinnamon. 

I folded the final third over and cut 1 inch strips with a large knife.  

Twisting the dough. 

The twists in the caramel topping. 

When they came out of the oven. 

The final product.  Keep in mind that this was only half the dough, so you would have twice as many twists if you made the entire recipe at once.