King Cake II

We didn't have great luck with our last king cake.  This is a creative twist on the original idea, and it worked really well.

Ingredients

• Dough
• .75c milk
• 2tbsp butter
• 2.25tsp yeast
• .25c sugar
• 1 egg
• .75tsp salt
• .25tsp nutmeg
• 2-3c flour
• Filling
• .5c brown sugar
• 1.5tsp cinnamon
• .25c flour
• .25c raisins
• .25c butter, melted

In a pan, bring the milk to a boil, stirring often.  Remove from heat and add the butter.  In a kitchenaid (or just a big bowl, I guess) add the dry ingredients for the dough along with the egg.  Start the mixer and add the milk / butter mixture.  Let it knead a lot, then adjust the flour ratio so that you get a SLIGHTLY sticky dough.  Form the dough into a ball and coat lightly with oil.  Set it in a bowl in a warm place to rise until doubled, about 2 hours.

Meanwhile, make the filling.  Get ready for this: mix the filling ingredients together.  DONE.

Preheat the oven to 375.  When the dough is done rising, roll it out on a well floured surface until it's about 11" x 16" (eyeball it).  You want a big rectangle.  Spread the filling over it evenly - I needed to use my fingers - then roll it up like you're making cinnamon rolls.  Actually, if you're using an almond, this is a great time to hide it.  Now place the bread on a cookie sheet (on parchment paper) and connect the ends together to make a big doughnut.  Slash 1/2" cuts in the top at 1" intervals (eyeball it again).  Bake for 30 minutes.  Frost with butter cream frosting.  Awesome.

Thoughts: This was great.  The whole "cinnamon roll" aspect was awesome.  The only bad thing was that it was kind of dry.  I think that in the future I would use neutral oil instead of butter and not use any eggs (or just the yolk).  However I would definitely make this again.  The frosting really saved this from being TOO dry.

Disaster Index: 1/10