Gourmet Gamer Girl travels to Tamriel to make some sweet rolls!

The Origins: Baking, Gaming, & Skyrim

Let me guess... someone stole your sweet roll?

One of the most memorable lines lovingly recited by hold guards from Bethesda's fan-favorite hit, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Released in 2011 with plenty of anniversary re-releases and over 20 million copies sold, Skyrim holds a loving place in the heart of many gamers, but perhaps none more-so than than that of this author. 

I have loving memories of the car ride to Gamestop on a cold November day to watch my older brother pick up his original copy for the Xbox 360, despite the fact that I wasn't a very big gamer in 2011. Then again, maybe if accidentally killing my Sims 2 families because I was very awful at keeping them alive counts- I could have been considered a gamer. But, I digress.

The first time I picked up Skyrim was in late 2012- almost a year after the game's original release. Safe to say- I was hooked from the beginning. I have fond memories of huddling in my older brother's room in our basement while he was away at college trying my best not to get obliterated by groups of wolves or flying dragons. Despite my best efforts, I did get obliterated- usually more often than not. 

I still remember having the time of my life playing this game for the first time. The environments, the story, and the characters captivated me. I just wasn't used to playing story driven games. There was nothing quite like the magic of playing through Skyrim as wide-eyed 12-year-old who barely knew how to hold a controller. I cherish those moments- now more than ever as a 23-year-old who still greatly enjoys running around Tamriel hunting down wolves and dragons in her free time. Time may change people, but it never takes away our fondest memories.

So, back to sweet rolls. Those pixelated puppies still look delicious, no matter how many times I've played through Skyrim. Yet, after 11 years I never once thought- Huh. Those look delicious, and I'm halfway decent at baking. Why don't I try making some homemade sweet rolls? So.. why have I not tried making sweet rolls before? The answer, dear reader? I have no idea. Despite my love of Skyrim, the idea never once crossed my mind until last week. So, today, I decided to attempt to put my baking expertise to good use to re-create one of my favorite foods from one of my favorite games. Without further ado- a gamer girl who knows how to bake tries her hand at making some delicious sweet rolls that won't get stolen by a member of the Thieves Guild... probably.

***

The Gourmet Gamer Girl's Guide to Baking Sweet Rolls 

I wanted to dedicate this blog to trying to recreate recipes from games that I love. Sometimes, I have recipes released by the people who created the game, or who worked with the creators to make a cookbook inspired by the game. Other times, I'm making it up as I go using my knowledge of cooking to figure out how to make the item without any outside assistance. Well, dear reader, this is one of those times where I am following a recipe. That's for one major reason- and it has everything to do with the difference between cooking and baking. See, when you're cooking something, it's more of an art. You can do almost anything you want to change a recipe- that is if you even have one. Subbing coconut milk instead of half-and-half in the butter chicken I made the other day? Right-o. That's fair game. Baking on the other hand? Baking is a science. You start screwing up the ratio of flour to egg to baking powder and you won't end up with cake- you'll end up with a pile of mush that's inedible and tastes half raw. In baking, everything has a purpose. That's why you don't substitute baking powder with baking soda- they aren't even close to the same thing. 

So, why am I not trying my hand at creating my own recipe? I may be a good baker- but the science behind it all isn't my forte. Knowing the exact amount of flour to baking powder to sugar I need to create the perfect baked roll is not something I wanted to try my luck at. I'll leave the ratios to the experts, and do the best job I can following their guide to baking a sweet roll. Besides- I wanted something I could actually eat. A half raw flour monster doesn't sound very appetizing.

In my search efforts to find a good recipe to start with, I landed on The Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel. This is a cookbook created in conjunction with Bethesda, and details hundreds of Tamriel recipes recreated by the author. Luckily for me, this cookbook also listed a recipe for the game-famous sweet roll. So, I decided to follow the recipe listed in the book, as it was the closest I could get to a lore-accurate sweet roll. I mean, it's literally an Elder Scrolls cookbook- how much closer can I get?

The Baking Process

Luckily for me, the gathering of ingredients for this recipe was relatively simple. Since the base for a sweet roll is mostly similar to the base for your standard loaf of bread, I already had a lot of these things at home (minus the cream cheese and heavy whipping cream for the frosting, and the whole milk for the rolls themselves).  Even with buying a few extra things I didn't have at home, making these sweet rolls wasn't overly expensive- and I got a ton of them after baking!

Now, baking can sometimes be complicated. I'm talking about the having to sift all your dry ingredients-pull out the scale to measure things-add the dry ingredients 1 teaspoon at at a time level complicated. The kind of baking that takes hours just to end up with a half-risen cake because you forgot to sift the baking powder. This recipe was nowhere near close to that. In fact, the author gave it a moderately difficult rating to do correctly- and I disagree. This is one of the simplest recipes I've ever made!

To start, you mix melted butter, warm milk, and honey together until the honey is dissolved.

Next, add in quick rise yeast and some salt. This tells us two things when we're baking: First, that the author of the recipe is trying to enhance the flavors in the roll itself. That's why we add salt when we bake! Seriously, next time you make chocolate chip cookies, add just a pinch of salt into the batter. It makes it taste so much better! You could also top with sea salt too, which is equally as delicious when paired with chocolate- but I digress. Second, adding yeast means we're likely going to have to let this proof. We add yeast into some recipes (like bread) so that the dough ferments.

Now, that may sound disgusting. However, the point of fermenting or proofing dough is so that the end product has air bubbles. We don't want something so dense you could build a house foundation with it. We want light and airy- especially when it comes to bread-like goods!

Once this is mixed, we follow with eggs and flour so that we actually have dough. Up until this point, I'd been using a standard silicone whisk- but most batters tend to get harder to mix once you start incorporating dry ingredients. I decided to switch to a hand mixer to make life slightly easier (and also make my batter not as clumpy!)

 

 

So, here's our batter. Next comes actually turning it into sweet rolls. Issue number one crops up here for me. I don't own mini bundt cake pans- much as the recipe calls for. In fact, I don't even know if I own a normal bundt cake pan. I don't make many cakes- and I definitely don't make bundt cakes. So, dear reader, what did I do? I improvised. 

Remember when I said you shouldn't screw with baking? Well, that was a half lie. See, you can screw with baking recipes- but only in handful of ways that won't completely ruin the recipe. Making a cake, but you don't have a 9" by 13" pan? Use a different pan! The object you use to cook your batter literally never matters in the grand scheme of things. Bought a box of cake mix, but you want to make cupcakes out of it? Go for it. Want to turn your muffins into a giant muffin cake? Why not? You do you, boo! The vessel you use to bake only really changes one thing- the cook time.

So, I decided to turn my sweet "rolls" into sweet "muffins" since silicone muffin tins were what I happened to have on hand. This meant some slight adjustments to the 15 minute bake time to make sure they didn't burn. Otherwise? Same as ever. This isn't the first time I've had to improvise a recipe when I baked, and I doubt it'll be the last. Regardless, flavor is what matters- not shape. So... my sweet rolls fell more on the muffin side of the scale. No big deal for me!

I did my best to divide my batter as evenly as I could into my muffin cups. The recipe didn't call for spraying the tins with some form of non-stick cooking spray before adding the batter, but I did anyways. It's become a habit of mine to spray everything with non-stick spray when I'm baking (and honestly, it's really not the worst habit that a person can have!)

After filling my tins, I let them hang around on top of the oven for a half hour- same as the recipe calls for. However, my oven was not preheated here. My oven tends to heat pretty fast (and it was also pretty hot outside when I was making these), so I decided to wait until the last five minutes of proofing before I turned on my oven. Leaving these on top of a hot oven didn't seem like a good idea- mostly due to the fact that if the top of the oven gets hot, they may start cooking on the bottom. That would be kind of gross, so I did my best to avoid that. Also, I didn't want to proof on a hot oven. Last time I tried doing that with pizza dough, I ended up with a crusty pizza monster that like tripled in size. Yikes!

So, here they were after proofing (but before baking). They looked nice, but I probably filled the tins slightly too much. I'll have to remember to reduce the amount I put in each cup next time, because these were definitely going to grow in the oven too. Friendly tip, dear reader? If you're making cupcakes never fill them to the top. Only fill your tins half way. They usually rise to the top (or close to it) when they bake. Otherwise, you end up with a janky cupcake monster as all the tops of your cupcakes are connected together.

I baked mine for about 10-12 minutes. I knew they wouldn't need as long as the bundt cake pan variants would, but I also wanted to make sure they were cooked in the center so I wasn't eating raw sweet roll dough. 

Here they were after baking. Remember the cupcake monster? Yeah. I definitely filled these slightly too much for my liking. This meant they were also going to be a massive pain to get out of the tins. I let them cool in my dining room for awhile so they would be easier to remove from the tins- and also so that the rolls had time to firm up before I attempted removal at all.

Speaking of that pain I mentioned? I am very glad I chose to spray the tins before baking. These were indeed a massive pain to get out- and they also decided to stick slightly when I was trying to remove them. Probably should have sprayed the tins with a thicker coat of non-stick spray. Alas, hindsight is 20-20. 

 

 

Not my finest removal job, but sometimes we have to work with what we have!

The Frosting Process

So, I left the rolls off to the side while I made the frosting. Now, the thing to know about frosting anything when you bake is that the frosting process is at best- finicky. It's pretty much never going to turn out how you want, be it in terms of consistency or just general looks. Consistency was one of my big problems unfortunately.

I started with the basics of the recipe. Cream cheese, butter, powdered sugar, and heavy whipping cream, just like the recipe called for.

Now, when I see pictures of sweet rolls, the frosting ends up somewhere between a thick glaze and a honey-like consistency. My first try at the frosting? Wallpaper paste. I’m talking about the kind of frosting they put between the layers of the cakes on Cake Boss to make sure it’s not going to move an inch during transport. Think level 10 hairspray, but for frosting.

Yeah, that’s definitely not going to work.

I decided to thin it out with more heavy whipping cream to see if I could end up with more of that glaze I was looking for. I ended up using around a cup of heavy whipping cream to thin it out enough to be semi-pour-able. That was.. a lot more than the recipe called for, but I ended up with something that was workable for what I needed.

So.. actually frosting. Remember before when I said that frosting something never turns out as well as the picture you have in your head? Well, this was one of those situations. I already knew that I wasn’t going to have the same beautiful sweet roll I’d seen pixelated on my screen so many times (curse you, lack of small bundt pans!) I at least thought I might be able to get that beautiful drizzled look, but alas- my frosting was still slightly to thick for that. I did my best to try to mimic it to the best of my humble baking abilities, but the result still wasn’t really what I wanted.

Oh well. At least they’ll taste good… Right?

***

The Gourmet Gamer Girl Verdict

 

So.. the big question: how did they taste? Were they as delicious in real life as they look on the screen? Well, dear reader, they were divine! Despite some minor hiccups in the baking and frosting process, these were absolutely delicious. I can now understand why every guard in Skyrim heftily complains every time I walk up to them that some poor citizen has once again cried over the loss of their beloved sweet roll.

Now, taste aside- these were ridiculously easy to make, as I mentioned earlier. For hands on work? No more than 30 minutes. None of the ingredients were hard to come by either. Need something super simple to make with ingredients that are both easily accessible and super cheap to buy? For that, these make a fantastic recipe. Definitely something you could enjoy for breakfast with a nice cup of coffee, or perhaps after a long dragon battle with a nice bottle of Honningbrew mead.. 

 

As for whether or not I'd make them again? Absolutely. With some minor modifications, of course. I definitely want to try adding some form of dried fruit and nuts into the batter for more texture. I also want to get actual bundt pans for cooking my next batch- and hopefully they'll come out slightly better that way. Finally, I plan on thinning out my frosting just slightly more. My thinned out version was still too thick for what I wanted these to look like. Ah, well. Sometimes then plan doesn't always work. The good thing about cooking as well as baking? Even if it doesn't turn out as beautiful as you envisioned, it still probably tastes delicious!

So, my final thoughts? Great recipe. The end product was delicious, even if they weren't as perfect as I thought they were going to be when I started. I'm quite confident 12-year-old me would be very impressed that 23-year-old me tried her hand at making one of the most delicious looking food items from one of her favorite games- and somehow managed to do a decent job in the process.

Nostalgia is always a nice feeling, but I think it's definitely much better when you can enjoy it with a nice hot sweet roll and a cold glass of milk! :)

 

*** 

 

If you're interested in trying your hand at recreating some of Tamriel's most delectable cuisines, you can find a copy ofThe Elder Scrolls: The Official Cookbook by Chelsea Monroe-Cassel right here! :)