Brownie Truffles

Julia is here in Pontlevoy visiting for her 2-week spring vacation. Early on I showed her the next five recipes planned for the blog and asked her which one(s) she wanted me to make while she was here. "The Brownie Truffles. Definitely."
There's some more good stuff coming up for sure, but she was so right about this recipe. It's rich but not too sweet and combines fruit and nuts and chocolate very nicely. It left me wondering why I hadn't made these before.

The recipe begins with a brownie, but not just any brownie. This is a brownie stuffed with booze-soaked dried apricots. What's not to like?
Alicia and I grew up with dried apricots--our maternal grandparents had a large backyard with many fruit trees, most of them apricots. The Blenheims--the good kind. So every summer we would trek out to my grandparent's house about once a week and "cut cots." We would sit in what my grandmother called "the outie," a kind of glorified tool shed/gazebo, all around a big table, and we would cut buckets and buckets of apricots in half and put them on trays for my grandfather to set up for drying. Of course there was a lot of snacking, and the less-than-perfect apricots would go into the "jam cots" or the "pie cots" bowls, but my grandparents still made a whole lot of dried apricots for us to take home and keep in the freezer. My mother would always make "Golden Nuggets," a Betty Crocker recipe for cookies with coconut and dried apricots, at Christmas. Yum. All of this to say that dried apricots are a taste of childhood for me.

If you look carefully, you'll see that there used to be brownie batter in this bowl. My helper got a bit carried away in the cleaning department. I don't blame her.

OK, here we are ready to dip the brownies. You see that we have many shapes and sizes. Maida says to cut the brownies into 16 squares, but we were a bit more dainty. Also Julia thought that truffles should be round, so she rolled some into balls.

The dipping process. We didn't have nearly enough walnuts, so we switched to sliced almonds. The walnuts were better, though the almonds were OK.

Mmmm...truffles. And my hand, coated in chocolate nutty goodness. That was a delightful clean-up task.
We loved these a lot. So much so that we forced ourselves to give them away to anyone who would take them. These would make a great holiday goodie, but why wait?

Here's the recipe.

Brownie Truffles

4 oz. dried apricots (get the Blenheim kind from Trader Joe's if you can)
3 T. Grand Marnier or Cointreau (I used Calvados because it's all I had; it was fine)
2 oz. unsweetened chocolate
4 oz. (1 stick) butter
Pinch salt
1 scant cup (6.5 oz.) sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 t. vanilla
1/4 c. (1.25 oz.) unsifted flour

Soak the apricots the night before: Use scissors to cut them into thin strips. Put them in a jar with a lid and pour on the booze. Let them sit, stirring and shaking when you think of it, overnight.
Now make the brownies. Heat the oven to 325. Line an 8-inch square pan with aluminum foil or parchment and butter that. Melt the chocolate and butter in a large microwave-safe bowl in the microwave for about a minute to a minute and a half, stirring after every 30 seconds. Stir in the salt, sugar, and the eggs, one at a time. Then stir in the vanilla and the flour. Finally, pour in every drop of the apricots and booze. Stir that and scrape into the prepared pan. Bake for about 25 minutes (Maida says 40-45, but really, check after 20), or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool to room temperature, then chill/freeze until firm.
When the brownies are nice and cold, get the coating ready:

1 lb. walnuts, chopped fine but not ground (really, you'll probably need most if not all of this)
1 lb. milk chocolate (I used a combination of milk and dark and probably somewhat shy of a pound. You don't need the full pound and a half Maida calls for, in my humble opinion.)
6 T. (3 oz.) Crisco or butter (I didn't use this. I imagine it makes the chocolate coating a bit thinner and easier to use. But we had no problems with pure chocolate.)

Get the brownies out and cut into 16 small or 32 tiny squares. Put them on a long sheet of waxed or parchment paper.
Put the walnuts in a pie plate or other wide, shallow bowl. Melt together the chocolate and Crisco in 30-second intervals in the microwave. Be careful because milk chocolate burns very easily.
Now find a helper, if possible, and make an assembly line: dip the brownies first in the chocolate, and then roll them in the nuts. We used a fork for dipping and hands for rolling. When all the brownies have been dipped/rolled and you've done your share of quality control, you'll probably want to put them in the freezer for a bit to firm up. This doesn't take more than half an hour. Then let them come to room temperature and serve. And then chase random people down in the street to offer them truffles because They Must Go.

Extra Chocolate Monsters

OK, the real name of this recipe is "Extra-Bittersweet Chocolate Chunk Monster Cookies." But to me, they're extra-chocolate monsters. They have too much chocolate (!) and are rather monstrous.
I have actually made this recipe before--I don't remember it, but I have cryptic notes written in: "wasn't thrilled, but others were--bake sale!" So I didn't like them and so I foisted them off to other people. Guess that's what will happen again. Fortunately, the students are back at the Abbey. The perfect victims for the perfect crime. Bwahahahaha!
Update: The students loved these: not a crumb left. So my notes from many years ago continue to be accurate...
OK, they're not THAT bad. They just don't provide that perfect balance of sweet, buttery chew against the chocolate. And Maida's favorite, almond extract, really seems out of place here.

Here's the dough. Note that there's barely enough to contain the large chunks of chocolate (Maida specifies for them to be no smaller than 1/2-inch squares).

The recipe said to make 8 cookies, but I'm a rebel and squeezed out 12. And I forgot to flatten them. Oops.

Here's the big issue I had with the cookies, besides the fact that they don't taste that great: the chocolate is not contained. That's a lot of wasted chocolate right there.
Verdict: I would stick to a classic chocolate chip cookie. These cookies are getting a lot of press right now (check out David's version for a laugh). These also look like a good giant cookie, although they go in a different direction.
But if you must, here's the recipe. Buy your chocolate on sale!

4 oz. (1 stick) butter
3/4 t. vanilla
1/4 t. almond extract (consider omitting this)
1/2 t. salt
1/3 c. (2.3 oz.) sugar
1 c. (4 oz.) sifted flour
9 oz. bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, in large chunks
4 oz. walnuts, in large pieces

Heat the oven to 350. Line three cookie sheets with parchment or get three sheets of parchment ready. Cream the butter until soft, then add the vanilla, almond, and salt. Then gradually add the sugar and beat that a minute or two. Finally, beat in the flour at low speed. Take the bowl from the mixer and stir in the chocolate and nuts. It will take some stirring to get this more or less incorporated. Divide the dough into 12 equal pieces, and roll each piece into a ball. Having wet hands helps with this step. Put the balls on the parchment paper, 4 to a sheet, and use your wet hands to flatten them out a bit. Bake the cookies for 15-17 minutes, until they're still light on top but brown around the edges. Carefully transfer to racks to cool. Find some willing victims to eat your cookies once you've had yours.

Raisin Banana Cupcakes

Ah, another Saturday morning, another Maida Heatter breakfast treat! Despite the name cupcakes, these are real muffins, with more banana than anything else. But sadly for Alicia and Claire and all the other raisin-haters, these do have raisins.

So here's the line-up. As you can see from my bananas, it was definitely time to make these muffins! But someone ate the third banana I was saving, so I had to carefully cut the recipe in half (because I ended up with half of the given weight of bananas). I always hate it when I have to do half an egg, but it worked out OK.

Here they are, all baked up. The half recipe only made 6 giant muffins, which disappeared very quickly, even though Claire only took a few bites, objecting to the raisins. Julia claimed this time to not object to raisins per se, but said that they didn't contribute to this recipe. We agreed that the same amount of walnuts would probably be better.
So the verdict? Meh. These were fine, but they probably won't become my go-to banana muffin recipe. But here's the recipe so that you can make your own judgement:

Raisin Banana Cupcakes

3.5 oz. light raisins or walnuts
1 c. (4 oz.) sifted flour (I used about half whole wheat)
3/4 t. baking powder
3/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. nutmeg
1/4 t. cinnamon
3 large (12 oz., peeled) bananas, mashed
1 large egg
1/3 c. (2.3 oz.) dark brown sugar
1/4 c. (2 oz.) vegetable oil (I used melted butter; some nut oil might be nice here)

Heat the oven to 375; line or spray about 20 muffin cups. Put the raisins in a heatproof bowl or cup and cover them with boiling water. (Or toast the walnuts) Let them sit while you put the muffins together. In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, nutmeg, and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the bananas, egg, sugar, and oil. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Drain the raisins and add them (or the walnuts) as well. Spoon/pour the mixture (like Maida's other muffin recipes, this is pretty liquidy) into the prepared muffin cups and bake for about 25 minutes (check after 20) or until the top springs back when gently pressed. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and enjoy the beginning of your day.

White Custard Cream, or Patience is a Virtue

I made this cream to go with the apple and orange cobbler from the last post. Such a simple recipe, and yet it involved a broken dish, intervention from Sami, and being 30 minutes late for our dinner party. The problem was all about patience.
(not pictured: sugar. Also, note the fresh-from-the-chicken eggs) This custard cream is like a crème anglaise but made with egg whites. I had never seen anything like that before and worried that it would curdle as soon as you looked at it. So I got it up to about 135 degrees when Maida said 170, but then it seemed to be curdling, so I took it off the double boiler, strained it into another bowl, crossed my fingers, and put it into the fridge.

About half an hour before we were supposed to leave, I asked Sami to check on the cream--it looked weird to me. "This is too thin," he said. And so we put the bowl back over the pot of simmering water.
Unfortunately, the bowl we were using was not tempered glass and cracked noisily after about 5 minutes. Due to Sami's cool head, we were able to rescue most of the cream (but not the bowl--we owe our landlords a glass bowl) and strained it into a genuine Pyrex bowl. Then Sami stood there and stirred. And stirred. And patiently stirred.

I swear it took at least 40 minutes for the cream to reach this stage. And we even added a bit of cornstarch slurry just in case. But it did whip up into a thick cream, and it eventually reached that target temperature of 171.
This shows me that I've been making undercooked crème anglaise for years. Rose Levy Berenbaum always has you take the custard off the heat when it starts steaming: this started steaming at about 135 or so. But really it needs more time and temperature to thicken properly. And above all, it requires patience, which I don't always have.
So now many things occur to me: Perhaps you could make a sauce like this on the stovetop if you kept the heat low and stirred like crazy. And perhaps you could make custard sauce with whole eggs: if you can make it with just whites and just yolks, why not both?
But it all boils down to this: I need to plan for a good 45 minutes at the stove to make a good custard sauce. Which I will need to do more often now, since French (industrial) ice cream doesn't do it for me...

Here's the recipe. Put on some music or a podcast or your favorite TV show and prepare to stand at the stove.

White Custard Cream

2 c. cream
2 T. sugar
4 large egg whites
1 t. vanilla
a few drops almond extract

Put a few inches of water in a saucepan that your HEATPROOF mixing bowl will fit over, and put that over medium heat to get the water simmering. You'll also need another bowl or pitcher with a strainer over it. Microwave 1 cup of the cream for about 1 minute to 1-1/2 minutes until it is steaming but not boiling. Add the sugar and stir to dissolve. In a HEATPROOF mixing bowl, whisk the egg whites and the remaining cold cream until the whites are no longer gooey and the mixture seems uniformly liquid. Whisk the hot cream mixture in gradually, then put the bowl over the simmering water in the saucepan and stand around stirring and scraping the mixture until it reaches 171 on a candy thermometer. Maida says that takes 5-6 minutes. Things must heat faster in Florida. Once you've reached the magic temperature and the custard has started to thicken nicely, pour it through the strainer into the bowl or pitcher you've gotten ready. Now add the vanilla and almond. Maida makes the very good suggestion of first pouring a few drops of almond into a spoon and then pouring it into the custard so that you don't accidentally make Almond Medicine Cream. Let the cream cool down at room temperature, and then cool it. Serve this with fresh fruit or with cobbler or anything that calls out for something white and creamy.

Apple and Orange Cobbler

Anyone who reads this blog must think we spend all our time either giving or going to dinner parties. And maybe they're right: we do feed and get fed a lot. Since I'm not naturally outgoing but enjoy feeding people, dinner parties are a chance for me to socialize in a comfortable atmosphere. And it helps me move my blog desserts out the door!
This week's dessert was no exception: we were invited to a sort of potluck dinner at the home of a French-American couple here in town. So there were two Franco-American families, an expat Brit with her daughter and parents, and a French family who had moved here from, as I understand it, North Africa. Very international--just like our dinner parties in Mississippi! Many lame attempts by us Anglophones to communicate in French; many lame attempts by the Francophones to speak English. And yet we all had a great time.
Our hostess, Pamela, tried very hard to communicate what dish everyone should bring, but in the end, it seemed that everyone brought a dessert. There was coconut flan and chocolate mousse and this cobbler (with the custard sauce recipe that will follow) and some cupcakes that I made because I was worried the cobbler wouldn't be enough for 13 people. All these desserts came after snacks, a starter, a main course, cheese, salad, and many bottles of wine. I think we were all in pain afterwards. But everything was so good!

So, to the cobbler. Again, I had reservations about this one. I'm not necessarily a fan of cooking oranges. That seemed strange to me. And I was a bit nervous that in the headnotes, Maida just reminisced about buying Pepperidge Farm bread rather than raving about the recipe itself. Still I plowed on.

One major change I made to the recipe was to thicken it with tapioca instead of making a roux. That was because I began making the cobbler at about 6:15 and the party was at 7. I also saved myself a bunch of extra dishes that way. And I like the gooey way tapioca thickens a fruit filling.

Also in the interest of time, I did not bother to roll out and cut biscuits for the topping. As I did for the cherry cobbler, I just dropped them on. They looked fine and tasted great.
The verdict? Delicious!! It's hard to go up against coconut flan and chocolate mousse, but everyone seemed to love the dessert. It was unfamiliar to the French because it's not a classic "crumble" (crisp), but they liked it because it wasn't too sweet (a miracle for a Maida dessert) and it didn't have any cinnamon :-). But they asked me many times what flavoring I had used. Orange flower water? Cinnamon? I guess the orange zest was kind of a nice background flavor. And all the butter in the filling probably also helped. It was delicious with the custard cream, but I think just some vanilla ice cream would be delightful as well.

Here's the recipe as I made it. You can bring it to a potluck with pride, or just save it all for yourself.

Apple and Orange Cobbler

3 lbs. tart apples (I used Pink Lady; Maida recommends Granny Smith), peeled and sliced into about 12 slices per apple
Grated zest of 1 orange
1/2 c. orange juice
3 oz. (6 T. ) butter
3/4 c. (5.25 oz.) sugar
3 large oranges, cut into segments without membrane (if you really wanted to cheat, I bet you could used canned drained mandarin oranges)
about 1/4 c. minute tapioca
1/2 t. vanilla

Butter a wide, shallow 2-quart baking dish (mine was an oval gratin dish) and have it waiting around. In a large skillet with a cover, put the apples, orange juice and zest, butter, and sugar. Mix and then cook, covered, over medium heat until the apples are barely tender. Meanwhile, segment your oranges (check out this video to see how. My segments were not nearly as pretty) into a bowl and let the juice fall into it as well. Add the tapioca and vanilla and let that sit until the apples look ready. Once the apples are just tender, take them off the heat and stir in the orange/tapioca mixture. Spoon that into the baking dish and let it sit while you make the biscuits.

2 c. minus 2 T (7.5 oz.) sifted flour (I used some whole wheat)
1/4 t. salt
2 t. baking powder
3 oz. (6 T.) cold butter, cut into about 12 pieces
2/3 c. cold milk
Cream/milk
sugar/vanilla sugar/cinnamon sugar

Heat the oven to 450. Get out your food processor. Put the flour, salt, and baking powder into the bowl of the processor and give it a few pulses to mix. Then toss in the butter and pulse that until the butter pieces are no larger than small peas. Finally, add the milk and pulse until everything is just incorporated. With two small spoons, scoop out the dough from the processor and dot the dough all over the fruit. You'll see from my picture that the dough doesn't really cover the fruit, but that's OK. Now brush the biscuits with some cream or milk, and sprinkle them with about a tablespoon of sugar (I used vanilla sugar, but cinnamon sugar would be nice as well). Bake for about 15 minutes, or until the biscuits are nice and brown and the fruit mixture is bubbly. Serve this hot. I turned off the oven after the baking time and left the cobbler in for a couple of hours, and it was still very good--it was very warm and not dried out. It's also good microwaved the next day for breakfast.

Chocolate sponge cake, or I'm no Macgyver

I have to say that I approached this recipe with trepidation. Reason One: Maida's chocolate cakes and I don't always get along, as seen in the Chocolate Festival Cake, Chocolate Sauerkraut Cake, and Red Beet Cake. Reason Two: Maida mentions in the headnotes that "You need an electric mixer on a stand for all the beating." Uh, no. Excellent workout for the arm, though. And Reason Three: You need a metal tube pan ("It must not be nonstick") for this thing to work. All I brought with me was silicon bakeware (it's much lighter in the suitcase), and the tube pan I borrowed from a friend was nonstick. So I had to improvise. If there's one thing I'm learning from this blog experience, it's how to improvise.

Here are the ingredients--oops, forgot the flour. But you can see right away that this will be a light, fluffy, no-butter cake.

Here's my improvised tube pan--a springform pan with a tin can in the middle. I probably should have opened the bottom of the can. And I probably should have centered it better.

Here's my improvised pan with the batter I spent 20 minutes mixing. It's a testament to how much I've been doing with my right arm that it didn't even hurt after all that.

Here's the cake out of the oven. As it was baking, I noticed that the batter got underneath the can and lifted it up. Oops. As I said, I'm no Macgyver.

And here's the cake. If my pan had been the correct size (I believe it was a bit big, although at one point the cake threatened to escape and spill over), perhaps it wouldn't be this flat. Still the cake is indeed "so light it feels as though it might fly away." And it did--straight into our mouths. But as light as it was, it was just kind of fluffy and sweet and cinnamon-y, but not very chocolatey. Claire said it needed frosting. I agreed--though I think a couple ounces of shaved chocolate folded into the batter might be even better. So I made ganache for the second half.

Mmmm...much better. This had better "fly away" to someone else's stomach before Claire and I devour the whole thing!

Here's the recipe. This is a great time to use the whisk attachment on your Kitchenaid.

Chocolate Sponge Cake
3/4 c. (2.6 oz.) sifted cake flour
1/4 c. (.75 oz.) cocoa powder
2 t. powdered instant espresso
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. salt
6 large eggs, probably best room temperature
2 t. vanilla
1 scant cup (6.5 oz.) sugar
(2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, shaved)

Preheat the oven to 325. Get out an angel food cake pan--a two-piece metal tube pan, but don't butter or spray it. Get out a sifter or strainer and two pieces of waxed paper. Put the flour, cocoa, espresso, cinnamon, and salt in the sifter and sift that mixture 6 times onto the waxed paper (actually, Maida says 7), alternating pieces of paper. I'm not sure what exactly the function of all this sifting is, but it's kind of fun.
Now put your eggs and vanilla in the mixing bowl, put in the whisk attachment, and crank up the mixer to high. Let that go for about 15 minutes, or until the mixture has "the consistency of soft whipped cream." This took 15 minutes on my hand mixer; it may take less time with a more powerful stand mixer. Then add the sugar very gradually, beating 3 more minutes while you add it. Sift the dry ingredients over the eggs, give that a couple of quick folds, and then VERY BRIEFLY use the mixer to get the flour incorporated. (If you choose to, fold in the chocolate now.) Wet the angel food cake pan with cold water, shake it out, and then fill it with the cake batter. Maida says to put half on one side and half on the other; this was a very good idea for me since the can kept sliding around. You shouldn't have that problem with a real pan. Bake for 50-55 minutes (mine was a bit overdone at 35 minutes, but I have trouble converting Fahrenheit to Celsius), "until the top just barely springs back when pressed with a fingertip." Turn the pan upside down (no, you don't need to hang it from a Coke bottle like Mom used to do) and let it cool like that. When the cake is completely cool, carefully cut around the edges and then unmold the cake. Maida recommends serving this upside down, which is actually more attractive. You can serve this plain, with fruit and powdered sugar, or with a lovely ganache. And get ready for it to fly off the plate.

Cinnamon Rolls

These cinnamon rolls turned out to be completely unnecessary but ultimately much-loved.
Why? I had planned to have them for Saturday breakfast, my usual time to crank out sweet breads and muffins. It was going to be a bit tricky because Sami needed to leave for Paris relatively early, we had overnight guests, and we were having a dinner party for said guests the night before. And as we all know, yeast dough needs time to rise. Lots of time.
No problem, I told myself, I'll make the dough Friday afternoon, roll it up and set it to rise before I go to bed Friday night, and then I'll just rise bright and early and put the rolls in the oven so that everyone can have fresh, hot cinnamon rolls in the morning.
Well, I did one of those things: I made the dough in the afternoon.

Note the mashed potatoes. They make all the difference in the dough, I think. Maida's yeast doughs are always a delight to work with--springy and not too sticky. I mixed this with my hands, and it turned out perfectly.

Here's the dough Friday afternoon. I covered it and put it on a cool windowsill so that it wouldn't rise too fast. It filled up the bowl and puffed up a few inches over the top. By the time our dinner party, which didn't get started until 8 and involved several bottles of wine, was over, I was in no condition to roll out dough. So I just punched down the dough and hoped for the best.

Note to self: when hosting French people, have less food than you think you need and more wine than you think you'll want.
Late in the evening, after the vegetable tart and the lamb cooked in milk and the spicy Swiss chard and the delightfully smelly Saint-Nectaire our guests had brought, I put the beautiful banana upside-down cake on the table. Everyone cooed, but for one guest who proclaimed that she could not abide cinnamon. Note to self: This seems true for a majority of French people. Very little of the cake got eaten.
Great, I told myself, those cinnamon buns will be quite the hit tomorrow morning!

So I got up and went to the bakery for something more traditionally French, like a baguette. Note to self: many French people prefer not to eat in the morning. Don't bother.

Nonetheless, they oohed and aahed over the rolls and their progress. But Claire was the only one who actually ate one. Can you tell which one?
Later I had one for lunch. It was sooo good. I wanted to be like Maida's husband Ralph, who apparently ate a whole batch over the course of the day: "It was his dinner. Then he had to go to bed. A few hours later he asked for more." But I had to hold firm, so I packed a basket with some of these and brought them to a French-American family in town. I told the French husband my story of the unnecessary cinnamon rolls, and he told me, "You shouldn't force people to eat food they don't like. You should bring it to people who appreciate it." And I believe they did.
One more note: Claire's friends at school, seeing her pick at her cafeteria lunch, sent her to the nurse to get a lecture on eating disorders. Apparently they've never seen her eat cinnamon rolls.

Here's the recipe. Serve it to appreciative folks.

Cinnamon Buns

210 g. or about 8 oz. potatoes
4-1/2 c. (22.5 oz.) unsifted bread or all-purpose flour (I used about 1-1/2 c. whole wheat)
1/2 c. (3.5 oz.) sugar
1/2 t. salt
1 envelope (2-1/4 t., I think) instant yeast
1 c. milk
1 egg
1 t. vanilla
2 oz. (1/2 stick) melted butter, cooled a bit

Peel the potatoes and boil them (no salt!) in water just to cover. When they are tender, drain off some of the water into a bowl for later. Mash the potatoes by themselves--no butter, no salt. Let the potatoes and water cool to warm room temperature.
In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, salt, and yeast. Make a well in that and add the potatoes along with 1/4 cup of the potato water, the milk, egg, vanilla, and butter. Use the dough hook of your stand mixer or a wooden spoon or your bare hands to work that all into a smooth dough that "feels alive." If you have a mixer, it'll just do its thing; if you're working by hand you'll want to dump out the dough and knead it for a while. When the dough feels smooth and lively, put it back in the bowl, cover it with a towel, and let it rise 1-1/2 hours in a warm place or 4-5 hours (or overnight) in a cool place.
When you're ready to roll, have ready the following ingredients:
2 T. sugar, mixed with 1-1/2 t. cinnamon and 1/4 t. nutmeg (This may not seem like enough cinnamon sugar. I worried about that, but the rolls were cinnamon-y enough. You could add more if you feel it necessary.)
1 oz. (2 T.) melted butter
5 oz. (1 c.) soft raisins (I probably used half of that)

Punch down the dough and roll it out (on a floured surface) into a large rectangle: Maida says an 18-inch square. I didn't measure, but rolled it as far as my Sil-Pat went.
Now smear/brush the dough with the melted butter, sprinkle it with the cinnamon sugar, and then distribute the raisins. Roll it up into a nice log. Since there's not too much sugar, this should roll neatly. Mark the log into 12 even pieces and then slice it. If you've got unminted dental floss, you can use that to cut your pieces. I love doing that. I did not, however, so I used a knife and that was fine. Put the pieces on a greased jelly roll pan (or back on the Sil-Pat), cover them with a towel, and let them rise for an hour in a warm place, or in a cool place overnight.
When you're ready to bake, heat the oven to 375. Take the towel off the rolls and put them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes (mine needed at least 25, and my oven seems to run hot).
While the rolls are baking, make the glaze:

1 T. (0.5 oz.) butter, room temperature
about 1 c. (4 oz.) powdered sugar
Pinch salt
1/2 t. vanilla
a few drops almond extract
2-3 T. light cream (or half and half or milk)

Mix this all together in an electric mixer, or mash it together with a fork. Glaze the rolls while they're still hot, preferably. Enjoy. Try to restrain yourself. But you'll probably ask for more in a few hours.