{Junk in their Trunk}: Bakers Dozen Rolls

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I can't remember where I came across this recipe so I can't really give credit where it is due. I was intrigued by this recipe because of the cheese. Who wouldn't love a roll with cheese cooked right into it, right? After making these many times, I would now have to say that my favorite thing about this recipe is how fast and easy they are to make. Want rolls for dinner but don't think you have time to pull it off? Try these babies! Fast and easy and really rather tasty! Here is the recipe:

2 to 2 1/2 cups flour
2 tbsp sugar
1 pkg yeast (or 2 1/4 tsp if you don't have the packages)
1/2 tsp salt (I always double the salt because I am a NaCl junkie, but you don't have to if you feel salt is an issue)
3/4 cup warm water
2 tbsp butter, melted
3/4 cup shredded sharp cheddar cheese (I never measure this and I'm sure I usually put gobs more than this amount in there - who's ever heard of too much cheese?)
2 tsp honey
4 tsp butter, melted (I usually use closer to 2 tbsp here - anything swaddled in butter is sure to taste good)
1/8 tsp garlic salt (I also double this - I mean garlic + salt, how can you go wrong here?)

In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, yeast and salt. Add water and 2 tbsp butter; mix until smooth. Stir in cheese and enough remaining flour to form a soft dough. Knead until smooth and elastic. Cover and let rest for 10 minutes. Divide into 13 pieces. Shape each into a ball. Place in a greased 9-in. round baking pan. Cover and let rise in a warm place until doubled, about 30 minutes. Bake at 375 F for 11-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Combine the honey, garlic salt, and remaining melted butter; brush over the rolls and serve.

For those who are visual people, here are some pictures of the process. First the ingredients for the dough:

Put all the above ingredients in your bowl, then add your water and butter and mix till smooth. The actual recipe suggests beating this with an electric mixer on medium speed for 3 minutes. Every time I have tried to do it this way, my mixer starts to smell like an ozone factory. A wooden spoon and a few strokes works just fine without that end-of-the-world burning smell. Add your cheese (as you can see from the picture, that is way more than 3/4 cup of cheese) and a bit more flour. Some days I need to add the whole extra cup of flour and some days less is more. My suggestion, add a bit at a time rather than just dumping in the whole extra cup all at once (yes, I have made that mistake, but it's not fatal, so no worries).

After letting your dough rest for 10 minutes, the hardest part of the whole recipe is dividing it into 13 balls. Some will be big and some will be smaller. Hey, people come in different shapes and sizes too!

I threw this picture in here to show where I usually stick my covered rolls to raise. That pot in the background was busy boiling some potatoes for dinner and I figured my contribution to the environment on this earth day weekend would be to utilize the heat coming off of the potatoes to coax these rolls along. On top of the dishwasher or on a sunny counter will also work. An oven heated to about 200 F and then turned off will also rise things nice and quick.

Here these babies are raised and ready for baking:

Here are the ingredients for your topping and the end result after mixing these three goodies together:

After your rolls come out of the oven, nice and browned, brush the above concoction over the top of each roll. The original recipe suggests taking the rolls out at this point and cooling them on a cooling rack but my family prefers them right out of the pan, hot and delicious.