My mom and I in 1996.

Dough before adding the 5-6 cups of flour.

Tea ring after about 10 minutes in the oven.

The finished loaves–a good lesson in reserving judgment!

My mom and I on Mother’s Day two years ago.

My mom was our 4-H leader for the majority of my middle school and high school years, maybe even all of them?  That being said, all five of us kids took a ridiculous number of projects to the fair each year in order to “make the best better” and all that jazz.  If you’re not familiar with 4-H, you should check out www.4-H.org, as it’s really an incredible nation-wide program to help kids become more well rounded.  And by well-rounded I mean, become an aware member of the community, but more importantly,  learn life skills like cooking, baking, sewing, taking care of animals, launching homemade rockets–you get the idea.  Essentially, 4-H promotes the DIY, and has been doing it for more than 100 years–long before “green” was a buzz word and DIY was a trendy acronym.As an adult, I’m most thankful for the baking skills I learned, and though I’ve lost my aesthetic touch, I can still make a pretty mean batch of cinnamon bread.  My mom taught me with painstaking patience to make her version of coffee cake, which has simple ingredients, but requires the patience of a saint, as its sticky gooey madness doesn’t have exact flour measurements, and when I finally think I have the right stickiness, I have to sit back and let it raise for an hour, before buttering, cinnamon-ing, and sugaring the layers to make bread, a tea ring, or rolls.  Making bread together in high school is one of my fondest kitchen memories, as my sister was long out of the house and the boys only tramped through the kitchen long enough to shovel food in their mouths.  Baking was just for us, and I loved the time with my mom and the sweet comfort of cinnamon that blanketed our time together.

Yesterday, a new friend came over to learn to make jam; we canned 36 jars of peach and strawberry jam (and have about 100 more oz in Tupperware to can).  I’ve been wanting to make my mom’s cinnamon bread all summer, and in honor of the 4-H fair this week back home, I decided to stir up some flour and test this old recipe for the sake of nostalgia and desire for jam pairing. Nine loaves later and one slightly misshapen tea ring the verdict is out–I still got it! The bread is sweet, and soft; eating is like being teleported for a moment, and I’m 16 on the front porch again, eating warm bread and spending time with my mom.  Visually, my bread is a train wreck and would never win my once coveted purple ribbon at the fair.  It looks like a two year old shaped and rolled it; I’m clearly a little rusty with a rolling pin.  My brother, Jeff, used to sample my coffee cake, eat nearly every slice, and then with a puzzled look on his face demand that I make more because he wasn’t quite sure if the ingredients blended quite right.  If he were here, he’d eat a few loaves and then tell me he’s not sure about my shaping skills—maybe I could make another batch to practice. This is a recipe that will always make my heart smile with memories of my roots on the farm; to this day, my mom serves her famous bread and cinnamon rolls every time we go home.

Mom Rocke’s Coffee Cake

Ingredients:

1C water
1C milk
1/2 C sugar
2C flour
2 packages yeast
2 eggs
1 stick softened or melted margarine (I use butter)
1t salt

Directions:
Combine the water and milk in a small class bowl or measuring cup and heat for 2 minutes in the microwave.  Meanwhile, mix sugar, flour, and yeast together in your mixing bowl (I use my KitchenAid).  Add the warm liquid from the microwave to your flour mixture and continue to beat.  Add the eggs, margarine or butter and salt.  At this point, I’d beat for another minute or so, and then switch to your dough hook, as it’s about to get messy with the flour.  At this point, you have a sticky dough mixture that should be entirely blended, and my mom’s recipe reads “add enough flour for soft sticky”-haha.  This equates to about 5-6 cups of flour.  Add one cup at a time, and let the hook knead/blend so that you can gauge if you need to stop adding flour.  You want it to be slightly sticky to the touch, but not so gooey that you couldn’t handle it.  Leave in the mixing bowl and allow to raise for an hour in a warm place.  I usually preheat my oven and leave the bowl on the stove.

After an hour, the dough should have about doubled.  Punch it down, and lay it out on a floured area.  I usually cut the dough in half with a butter knife, roll out each ball to a 9×12 type shape, then spread warm butter and cinnamon and sugar on the dough.  Roll your dough, and decide what to create—cut the roll in halves or thirds to have loaves, or slice in one-inch pieces for cinnamon rolls.  Or take the whole roll and create a circle to make a tea ring.  Bake at 350 for about 25 minutes.  Towards the end, run a little warm butter over the tops of your loaves and they will brown up really nice.  Let the bread cool on a rack and serve with fresh jam. 🙂

This is a great recipe to make for the holidays and serve with butter and jam or make into French toast.  I also like to make loaves and jam for a homemade Christmas present, as it’s a nice variation from the store bought present or gift card.