Chronicles of a Novice

Today, I was excited to try a new recipe for a traditional pumpkin roll. Honestly, I had no idea that pumpkin rolls were so popular. Evidently, they are a family favorite during the holidays for lots of people but this has never been introduced to my family so it was a total find when I stumbled upon the recipe. Seemed simple enough and considering that I have NEVER baked anything before except my failed attempts at chocolate chip cookies back in middle school where most of the dough was eaten before the oven was even warmed up and the cookies that were baked were subpar at best. Anyway, since I’m looking for my “thing,” a task, project, etc that I’m crazy good at and people look forward to experiencing, I figured I’d give baking a try since it was the holiday season and I was feeling festive.

I’m feeling good. I realized that I bought WAY too much ingredients but too much is better than too little right? Pretty much I had enough to bake about 27 pumpkin rolls (or something like that). I decided to bake 4 for different occasions: family Christmas get-together, office holiday potluck, Christmas morning with the “in-laws,” and then, of course, I needed one ….just to keep on hand for those pumpkin-roll-craving moments. Basically, I wanted one that I could eat eat eat and not share. I’m selfish like that.

Roll 1:
Damn. I used fresh squeezed lemon rather than the lemon juice already waiting for me in my boyfriends refrigerator. This resulted in delicious fresh lemon juice. Great right? Nope. I also ended up with a massive amount of seeds. That’s what I get for trying to get all fancy with the fresh squeezed stuff! I should have read the recipe a little closer…it states I could use bottled juice. My bad. Seeds taken out, pumpkin goo mixed, prepped and popped in the oven. Good to go.

Ooops. I forgot to grease the pan. I even THOUGHT about it but just failed to actually do it in my excitement to get the pumpkin goo cookin. Oh well…no big. It was a pre-greased (non-stick) pan so it should slide out perfectly, right? No such luck. Luckily, with the adept baking hands of my boyfriend for assistance, we were able to pry the bread out of the pan without wrecking it too badly. Sorta broken and ghetto looking but smells super yummy.

Oh! Room temperature butter and cream cheese means its gotta be sorta melty. I thought this just meant it had to have been sitting out of the fridge for a bit (i.e. not brick hard) before its use. I could barely stir the cream filling and finally asked for more input from informed boyfriend. We finally got out the hand mixer since the concoction was still rock hard. Much mixing resulted in a nice whipped filling but it started out with tons of little butter pockets. Everyone likes biting into little pockets of butter right? Mistake noted. Moving on.

The rest of this first round was pretty uneventful. I slathered the filling on the cooled bread, rolled it up rather easily although it tore a bit because the bread was a bit thick and then wrapped the roll in wax paper to freeze. Waa-la. First completed pumpkin roll!

Roll 2:
I remembered to use the bottled lemon juice. Much easier. Kept the bread as thin as possible, melted the butter and cream cheese slightly before mixing and buttered the pan for slippery slidey success. This roll was so beautiful, I found myself jumping up and down and laughing like a little girl. It was glorious and smelled SUPER good!

Roll 3:
This was ALMOST as glorious as roll #2 except I got a little excited about the ginger and put a full tablespoon in rather than a teaspoon. Some creative scooping removed most of the excess and I figured the sugary heaven that this roll turned into would cover up any extra ginger-y task. Oh, and I also forgot to add the lemon juice completely. No big deal right?

Roll 4:
This roll was actually sort of an experiment since I was using the last of the roll 3 mix (I had some extra so I may as well make another roll right?). Anyway, I realized I didn’t have enough mix for a complete roll so I just added some ingredients here and there without measuring. Bad idea. This is where I always get into trouble when I cook. I completely over estimate my ability to be creative and forward thinking in the kitchen when I should just follow the recipe and move forward. Bah! Essentially, what ended up happening was the pumpkin goo mix was a bit too thick with flour. This created a very dense baked bread that had some interesting color variations and swirlies. It also wasn’t as flat as the others which made rolling more difficult and not as pretty. Anyway, I slathered on tons of cream, rolled it up and called it good.

Overall the pumpkin roll experiment was a total success! My family LOVED it at the Christmas get-together, my co-workers couldn’t believe that I actually baked it myself and I’ve been asked for the recipe and any tips from about 6 people. Yay. Perhaps this is my thing! Perhaps this is what people will think of when they hear my name. Maybe they’ll think…”oh man! That girl can freakin’ bake the HECK out of a pumpkin roll. Best I’ve ever had.” Maybe that’s just wishful thinking but I’m willing to try again, make improvements and share my creation with any willing parties.