Bake up a basket of these homemade Vanilla Honey Butter Crescent Rolls made from scratch for your next family dinner or for the holidays.

Depending on how long you’ve been reading my blog, you may or may not know that I cook dinner by myself every night. That’s where the inspiration for a lot of my small scale recipes comes from because I only have one mouth to feed. However once in awhile, I do cook for others. Sometimes on the weekends I end up cooking for my parents and brother, which gives me the opportunity to make a full meal complete with side dishes because I know it’ll all be eaten. This includes recipes like fresh bread where leftovers don’t taste as great the next day. Most of the time I’ll make it from scratch because I love how therapeutic kneading dough is, although once in awhile if we are out all day before dinner, I’ll pick up a fresh loaf from a local bakery (in those cases I’ll at least make some herb butter to go with it). Usually I make my honey butter dinner rolls to go with soup or pasta as it’s a family favorite, but with the holidays coming up, I decided to dress them up and make Vanilla Honey Butter Crescent Rolls. After all, you can’t have a holiday meal without a side of bread.

You’re probably familiar with crescent rolls from a can where you pop it open, roll up the dough, and bake. These crescent rolls are just like that but made from scratch and taste 1000 times better because they are fresh and made with love. As if that wasn’t enough, I slathered them with vanilla honey butter on top complete with specks of vanilla bean. Imagine serving a warm basket of these soft and fluffy crescent rolls with a touch of sweetness on top. You’ll never buy canned dough again.

When you think vanilla, did you instantly think of dessert? If you haven’t tried vanilla in savory dishes yet, you’re missing out because vanilla can lend itself very well when balancing other flavors. In my crescent rolls, I used Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract and vanilla beans, which have a sweet, creamy flavor with velvety after-tones, making it ideal as an all-purpose vanilla. If you’re not sure where to begin, check out this vanilla pairing chart for more ideas on how to use vanilla in savory cooking.

Turning the dough into crescent rolls may seem fancy, but I promise you it’s not. Roll the dough into a circle, cut the circle into triangles, then roll up the triangles. The hardest part for me was not having enough counter space to roll out the dough, so I used a wooden board on my kitchen table. Seriously, who designs a kitchen with a counter that’s not very big? Remind me to put larger counters on my wish list next time I move.


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Vanilla Honey Butter Crescent Rolls

Yield: 12

Prep Time: 1 hour

Cook Time: 12 minutes

Total Time: 1 hour 12 minutes

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Ingredients

• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/4 cup (2 ounces or 4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
• 2 3/4 cups - 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/4 cup granulated sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons quick rising yeast (not active dry)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 egg, room temperature
• 1/4 teaspoon Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract

Vanilla Honey Butter

• Half of 1 Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon vanilla bean
• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
• 2 teaspoons honey
• Pinch of salt

Instructions

2. Whisk together the milk and melted butter and heat until very warm (120° to 130°F).
3. In a large bowl, combine 1 1/2 cups flour, sugar, yeast, and salt. Add the warm milk mixture and beat until moistened. Beat in the egg and vanilla. On low speed gradually beat in remaining 1 1/4 cups flour to make a soft dough. Dough will be slightly sticky, but if it's too sticky, beat in the remaining 1/4 cup flour.
4. On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough until smooth and elastic, about 6-8 minutes. Cover with a tea towel and let rest 10 minutes.
5. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
6. Roll out the dough to form a 12-inch circle. Cut the dough into 12 triangles. Starting with the wide end of one triangle, roll up dough, pressing the point into the dough to seal. Place the roll point side down on the baking sheet and curve to form crescent shape. Repeat with the remaining dough. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes.
7. Bake 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 15 minutes before brushing with vanilla honey butter (recipe below).

Vanilla Honey Butter

2. Make a slit to the vanilla bean lengthwise and scrape the seeds into a small bowl. Whisk in the melted butter, honey, and salt. Brush on top of warm crescent rolls.

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Source: Crescent roll dough adapted from Taste Of Home Fall Baking

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Nielsen-Massey Vanillas. Thank you for supporting me and the companies I work with as sponsored posts help pay for the costs of running Chocolate Moosey, including website hosting and groceries for recipe development.