2023, Family, Food, home, Uncategorized

Caramel Rolls

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Our daughter had an inexplicable yearning for a caramel roll the other day and went out to find one in Tacoma. No one she asked knew what she was talking about. Some people suggested sticky buns, but they didn’t look right to her. The ones she likes are available in every little café around here. The caramel is at the bottom of the pan, and the rolls are dumped upside down when they come out of the oven and the caramel drips down over the hot rolls.

She did some research and found that the caramel rolls that she was familiar with as well as the name caramel roll are peculiar to the Dakotas, Minnesota, and maybe parts of Wisconsin. She phoned some friends from California and they confirmed that they had never heard of caramel rolls. They had sticky buns. A Bismarck friend who lives in Virginia said no one there knew what caramel rolls were. Her best friend from childhood now lives in Reno, NV, and she said no one there spoke of caramel rolls, either. That led to her friend getting her aunt’s recipe for the caramel rolls that she bakes at her restaurant called The Cowboy Café in Medora, ND. Daughter sent me the recipe. It makes six pans of rolls, and the girls are hoping I can reduce the recipe to a single batch so they can make them. Her friend’s mother also sent them a caramel roll recipe from a cookbook published by a Lutheran church in Sharon, ND.

Husband found the cookbook from my Lutheran Church in Luverne. It had two caramel rolls recipes. He also found caramel roll recipes in the New Prague Hotel Cookbook and in The Norske Nook Cookbook from Osseo, WI. I sent the recipes to Daughter and her friend in Reno. They are thrilled. They both like to bake. Now they have multiple recipes to choose from when they are feeling homesick.

What do you miss most when you are away from home? Ever had genuine homesickness?

39 thoughts on “Caramel Rolls”

    1. No, it is just cloudy. The problem to the east of us is ice. We are 100 miles west of Bismarck, and there is an ice storm warning from Bismarck and points east. The blizzard is to the south in South Dakota. Son and DIL in Brookings seem to be missing out on the worst of it.

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  2. At 72 years of age, I cannot think of a time when I was ever seriously homesick. Though, during the 11 months I spent wearing green clothes in 1970 (in Vietnam), I would have happily gone home ANY day.

    Since July of 1976, I have no longer called sunny Southern California “home”. I claim it as “where I’m from”, but nothing beyond that. I would periodically return to visit family, but was often reminded that, having voluntarily left the nest to get a college education, which was though unnecessary for “normal human life”, I didn’t belong with this group of people who knew everything necessary by the time they turned 16.

    Homesickness? Not for that crowd.

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      1. One is considered to be wasting the time on “book learning” when what is deemed more important is “earning money” or “getting on with the important things of life” or “being nearby to help me (or us) with our problems.”

        I was accused of all three of those. Doubtless, there are more.

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        2. My father stayed around, going into and out of one business after another, deciding to do something that required more physical labor and less head knowledge each time. He had a stroke when he was 57 and spent the rest of his life progressively more disabled and living on the edge of things. Died at 70. My elder brother dropped out of jr. college, served in the Army (infantry, Vietnam) and never recovered from it. Spent the rest of his life in groups of men. He was a good builder, but couldn’t manage things. Died at 44 from cancer. Younger brother was “too smart” to let anybody at a college tell him what to do. Took up factory work (where he was smarter than the machinists and engineers, to hear him tell it). Broke his body, and now cannot stand very long or walk very far.
          Sister (10 years my junior) wanted me to come back from overseas and help her raise her kids. She lived on every kind of public benefit she could find. It was easier than working, but left her always on the edge of broke. She died before reaching 60. Her kids apparently didn’t mourn her.
          I’m really glad to have busted out of that place, though it leaves me with only such family as I have married into.

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  3. I miss my bed the most when I’m away. We have a Sleep Number bed and set it at 100, the firmest setting. Most hotel, AirBnB, and rental house beds are too soft and saggy for me.

    Haven’t been homesick too other than when I left for college my freshman year. Took a 3-day train trip from Minneapolis to Miami. Stepping off the train in Miami was a culture shock and a climate shock. Plus I was leaving behind my new girlfried (eventually my wife), which was devastating to a 17-yr-old. We’d only been “dating” for about a month when I left.

    Otherwise, I sometimes get homesick while on a Boundary Waters trip. Not too much, because I LOVE being up there, but it gets lonely on occasion.

    Chris in Owatonna

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  4. Rise and Shine, Baboons,

    I grew up making caramel rolls and I still know that recipe and process. I do not make them often just because I cannot stop eating them. They are a favorite treat when made properly. OpEd: “properly” is not buying frozen bread dough, then trying to pass it off as real sweet roll dough smothered in “caramel” which is made with cheap ingredients! That is an affront to the Real Caramel Roll. So.There.

    Regarding homesickness: I only experienced homesickness during our winters in Arizona. There we were, comfortable in a wonderful condo looking at a garden across the street and a horizon rimmed with mountain peaks, and I ached to go home. This response was such a surprise to me. As a kid I was the one who bolted out the door to go anywhere and see anything as long as I left my family behind. I would go see cousins, do sleepovers with friends, sign up for church camp for weeks at a time, and qualify for 4H trips, all paid for with babysitting money, to get away. Never once did I want to go home, and usually I went home only as a last option when there was no where else to go to avoid it.

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  5. “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?” Only in this case I am the one who won’t go away. I’ve never lived anywhere but here in the Twin Cities area and when I travel to other places I am usually too busy and engaged to be homesick.

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  6. My mother made them out of bread dough routinely.
    My son sent us a map of Christmas cookie recipe most often searched for on line by state. ND MN and WI all had the same one. The cookie withe the star shaped chocolate piece on the top.
    Clyde

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    2. Everyone else uses Hershey Kisses on peanut butter blossoms these days, but I’m a fan of the original Brach’s stars. You don’t have to unwrap each one, and they stay on the cookie much better when bitten into.

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  7. what do i miss most when away from home
    when i used to travel extensively i would get home and make tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich with morningstar farms bacon
    also peanut butter and raspberry jam on heavy grain bread
    i miss hanging with family and just watching everybody be them . it’s my greatest delight

    homesickness never
    i love home but i know ill be back so i can focus on enjoying and discovering more about wherever i am

    sticky rolls
    my mouth is watering
    i was never a guy with pastry calling out to me but in italy all the little pastry shops got me
    3 or 4 little pastries with an expression is my idea of heaven
    i enjoy napolians and coconut macaroons on the exotic and of bakeries and jelly rolls carmel rolls glazed and cake donuts but only a little of each today
    they sit kind of brick like in my stomach. but good enough going down to justify the bloat

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  8. I like caramel rolls, of course I do. I’ve never made anything like that. If I did I would eat them all and that’s really not a good thing. I always loved the huge cinnamon rolls at the Ole Store here in Northfield.

    I don’t recall a time when I’ve ever been genuinely homesick. This little condo, which is really just another little hole in a wall – like 63 other holes in a wall here and built cheaply for low income human storage – is more homey and beloved to me than any other I think I’ve ever had. I like getting out of here once in awhile, then feeling the hunger to get back home. It isn’t too big and it’s just small enough to be cozy for me. I get to have my favorite stuff around me that I love, and the art and other things I’ve collected all have their own perfect place. Ask me this question in May when I have been to Ireland and back. I’m quite sure at some point I will be homesick for my little haven.

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  9. Afternoon–
    My schedule is pretty lax these days, but I’m still meeting people who are back in the thick of it and it seems so hard to have to get right back into it. Everyone should get the week between Christmas and New Years off, then ease back into it. haha-This coming from a former dairy farmer!

    My mom didn’t make home made bread or caramel rolls. They don’t always seem very difficult or time consuming (biscuits I’ve heard I mean. Cover with caramel, same thing??)
    I remember her buying the Hostess caramel rolls in the tinfoil package. Dad liked them.

    Yeah, can’t get homesick if we never go anywhere.
    Son went with Grandma and Grandpa for 2 weeks when he was about 10 and He’d get homesick. I remember being with him at a 3 night school trip and he was in tears one night. “Too much too Much” we thought.

    I miss my bed and pillow, and the chickens and dogs and cows, and just the routine.

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  10. I haven’t ever strayed very far from home for an extended period of time, so homesickness has never been a problem for me.

    When there is consensus on the best recipe for caramel rolls, in a quantity that can be consumed by a small household, please post it here!

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  11. I worked at the Ole Store in Northfield for about a year and one of my jobs was to make the Ole Rolls. If you haven’t lived in Northfield and eaten an Ole Roll, but live in Minnesota or Wisconsin or the Dakotas and have had a caramel roll then you’ve had an Ole Roll. I used to make about 10-12 dozen a day. I haven’t made them since -/ mostly because, like Krista, if I made a whole pan, then a whole pan would get eaten quite quickly.

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    1. I’ll bet you made one of the rolls I devoured back in the late 70s. They were huge, fresh, fragrant, and absolutely delicious.

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  12. Like Abosku, the place I grew up in I do not claim as home any longer. With that said however, St. Louis had the Orange Freeze at Steak ‘n Shake. The Orange Julius, which is what you can get up here is not the same and not as good. Tragically YA and I learned last summer when we visited St. Louis that’s Steak ‘n Shake no longer makes the Orange Freeze. It’s a travesty.

    The other good St. Louis treat is the Concrete at Ted Drew’s. It’s a little bit like a Blizzard, but made from custard instead of soft serve so MUCH better!

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  13. I almost forgot the homesick part. I can usually go about 5 or 6 days before I really start thinking about home. My trip to China to get YA was the longest trip I’ve ever taken and I was ready to come home almost immediately!! It’s also the longest I think I’ve ever gone without having milk!

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  15. When I was a kid, the neighbor across the street made caramel rolls most every Saturday – though they usually were offered to the other moms along with coffee and not to us kids. Sigh. I loved the smell of them baking – to this day, the smell of caramel rolls makes be think of Bev’s sunny, warm kitchen.

    As for homesick… I don’t know that I have been gone long enough to every truly get homesick. 3 weeks in England as a teenager was too much of an adventure to begin to feel homesick, Norway felt a lot like here (but without my dog and with creamier ice cream), camp… well, camp is camp. I think I got pre-homesick when I was about a month away from moving to Illinois for grad school – I pulled the plug on that adventure before it happened, which wound up to be just fine. Would not be doing what I do, have the fabulous daughter I have, or the other various joys of my current life if I had gone after that MFA instead of staying here and getting a different MA altogether.

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  16. The summer after I graduated from High School I traveled to Europe as a Bass Clarinet player with America’s Youth in Concert. I had to audition for it. It was a concert band and choir group made up of High School students and played at various venues such as Carnegie Hall and all across Europe. We rehearsed at a college in New Jersey. I remember feeling tearful and anxious for no good reason, and realized, to my dismay, that I was homesick. Just realizing that made me feel better.

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  17. I felt terribly homesick my first winter in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It wasn’t a yearning for a specific place, food, or person, but the longing for a sense of belonging and feeling connected.

    At that time I had already experienced extended stays away from “home,” which was no longer a certain house or family, but a much broader sense of feeling familiar and connected to those around me. I suppose language was part of that, and so, perhaps, was food and cultural expectations.

    In Wyoming it hit me full force that I was not only a foreigner but an immigrant, completely out of my comfort zone. It didn’t help that I was also a new wife, and didn’t have a clue what the hell a good marriage looked like.

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  18. OMG, look what you’ve all done – now I’m just craving a caramel roll, and I don’t know if there’s anywhere in Winona that has one. BUT I’LL TRY, and alternately, will watch for the recipe here!

    Oddly enough, I wasn’t homesick the 4 years I spent in California after college. (Somewhat like PJ) I think, my homesickness was missing my connection to my self and people I felt at home with, which I’ve related before happened when in NYC with Wasband.

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  19. Woo!
    Oh, yeah!
    Rolling around at the speed of sound
    Got places to go
    Gotta follow my rainbow
    Can’t stick around, have to keep movin’ on
    Guess what lies ahead
    Only one way to find out
    Must keep on movin’ ahead
    No time for guessin’, follow my plan instead
    Trusting in what you can’t see
    Take my lead, I’ll set you free
    Follow me, set me free
    Trust me and we will escape from the city
    I’ll make it through, follow me
    Follow me, set me free
    Trust me and we will escape from the city
    I’ll make it through, prove it to you
    Follow me!
    Oh, yeah!
    Danger is lurking around every turn
    Trust your feelings
    You’ve got to live and learn
    I know with some luck that I’ll make it through
    Got no other options
    Only one thing to do
    I don’t care what lies ahead
    No time for guessin’, follow my plan instead
    Find that next stage no matter what that may be
    Take my lead, I’ll set you free
    Follow me, set me free
    Trust me and we will escape from the city
    I’ll make it through, follow me
    Follow me, set me free
    Trust me and we will escape from the city
    I’ll make it through, prove it to you
    Follow me!
    Follow me!
    I’ll make it through, oh, yeah!

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