Every holiday my family (SH and the three children) eagerly wait for the poppy seed rolls to come out of the oven. I have to swat hands away so some rolls remain for the next day’s Thanksgiving or Christmas feast. But these rolls are divine fresh out of the oven, slathered in butter, or just eaten plain.

My mother made them. My grandmother made them.

My mother and grandmother kneaded their dough by hand and now I use a bread machine.

Here is my recipe for the bread dough (written from memory). Put the ingredients in the bread machine pan in this order: 1 and 1/2 cups of lukewarm milk; 1/3 cups of pumpkin or mashed potatoes (optional); 2 teaspoons salt; 2 tablespoons sugar; 2 tablespoons of soft butter cut up into pieces;  4 cups of flour (King Arthur white bread flour is preferable bo not required); 3 teaspoons of yeast. Push the buttons so the machine makes the dough. while you make the poppy seed filling.

I always used Penzeys Spices. They smell incredibly good. Sometimes I don’t even need to look at the label to know what spice I am using.

In a small sauce pan, put in 3 tablespoons of poppy seeds, 3 tablespoons of sugar; 3 tablespoons of water, 3 teaspoons of cinnamon, and 1 teaspoon of lemon peel. Cook all of these ingredients, stirring until it bubbles. Then set aside to cool.

When the dough is ready, remove it from the bread machine. Place the ball on a floured surface and cut this in half. Now you have two balls of dough. Roll out one ball of dough into a circle.

Using the back of a spoon, spread half of the poppyseed mix on the circle of dough. Notice that mine is not perfectly round. Try to get the poppyseed mixture to the edges of the circle.

Slice the circle into wedges. I use a pizza cutter for this. I usually make 12 rolls for each circle, but you can make the wedges bigger. Then roll each wedge started with the side end and rolling to the narrow end. The narrow end should be tucked underneath the roll.

Arrange the rolls on a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. I am a huge convert to parchment paper because then I don’t have to grease the pan and I can reuse the parchment paper for a couple of batches of rolls or cookies. Brush the tops of the rolls with melted butter. Then set the pans in a warm place to rise until they are doubled in size.

Bake the rolls in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes. They should be a light golden brown when you take them out. Mine pictured above look darker because this dough had pumpkin in it. I made a batch of these last night and today (less than 24 hours), there are only 2 rolls left. 

When I was little, I once got in a heap of trouble over poppyseed rolls.

We were at my grandmother’s for Christmas. We had been a day or two and I had discovered a bag of poppyseed rolls in the bread drawer. I snuck them upstairs and ate them (piggishly) on the sly.

Then my grandmother started looking for this bag of rolls for dinner one night. Of course, she could not find them.

I confessed.

My mom was furious. Oh her eyes snapped with anger. I might even have gotten spanked except I was saved by my grandma

My grandma laughed and said I must really like her poppyseed rolls!