Pumpkin Rolls

No, these aren’t pumpkin flavored rolls – they’re just rolls shaped like pumpkins! I saw this recipe on Pinterest a few weeks ago and thought they’d be such a cute idea for dinner rolls at Thanksgiving. So, I made them! They weren’t hard to make, but will take a few hours so just be aware of that. There may have been some tears on my part when I was making these, but that had nothing to do with the difficulty level at all. Read on to find out what happened!

The recipe uses Rhodes Bake ‘n Serve Dinner Rolls and I found them in my supermarket so I got a bag of those. I made enough to feed guests and fill 1 large baking sheet (15). I placed them on the baking sheet and covered the baking sheet with plastic wrap to let the dough rise for 2 hours. After 2 hours, they had risen a little. Next, you cut slits in each dough mound, careful to leave the center intact. This was a little hard as the dough was sticky. Then you need to make an indent in the center for the stem (pecan) to go in at the end. I used the end of a chopstick and just twisted it back and forth. Then, I covered them back up with the plastic wrap to continue rising for another 2 hours. At this time I actually covered them with a dishtowel on top of the plastic wrap because the warmer the dough is the more it will rise. This totally worked.

So here’s the part where I shed a few tears. The rolls were on the baking sheet covered with a dishtowel on the dining room table waiting for me to brush them with egg wash and bake them. When I went to grab them for the egg wash after they were done rising, I noticed that someone had put a roll of aluminum foil on top of them! All the rolls in the middle were smooshed practically flat. I didn’t want to get mad as it was an honest mistake, but if you saw what they looked like you’d understand how they were so beyond help or fixing. I stayed calm and tried to fix them as best I could even though they were smushed, but was still sad that these rolls that I had been waiting to bake for the past 4 hours got flattened by some people being careless. Anyway, I brushed the egg wash on them and put them in the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes.

To my pleasant surprise the smooshed rolls did start to re-inflate in the oven so they weren’t too sad looking.

Once they came out, I put half a pecan in each center where I had left an indent. The pecans served as the stem of the pumpkins.

You can tell the ones that look a little flatter are the ones that were under the roll of foil, but they didn’t turn out too bad. Overall, I think they turned out pretty cute looking! The pecan stems are the perfect touch. As a side note – I don’t think Rhodes rolls are that tasty, they’re a little bland so I would definitely try to brush them with some oil and seasoning when I make the rest of the bag!