Snowed In

When it first started snowing, I laughed at all the silly Virginians racing for their emergency preparedness gear. The forecast predicted about a foot of snow. I'm from Colorado and spent the last six years in Utah. I think I can handle a foot of snow. And then, last night, the snow started. And it still hasn't stopped. And when the snow drifts started coming up our windows, we decided Bria needed to experience it. So we bundled her up. She doesn't have snow clothes, so decided a garbage bag would do the trick.
She was in heaven.
And now we are just thinking warm fuzzy thoughts for our snow day tomorrow. Church is canceled, but at least Hannah and Rob live on our street so we'll have some other humans to interact with over dinner.

And if we weren't snowed in, or at least if we weren't out of flour, I might make this warm and fuzzy treat:

That would be monkey bread.

I got the recipe from Pioneer Woman, and I highly recommend it. But the difference is that I made homemade roll dough. And that is what I want to share with you. This recipe comes from my great-great-grandma Venice Bigler (how awesome is the name Venice?). It's perfectly flexible for any kind of roll dough you need: dinner rolls, cinnamon rolls, orange rolls, and in this case, monkey bread.

1 c milk
3 T butter
1/3 c warm water
1 T yeast
1 T sugar
4 c flour
2 t salt
1/4 c sugar
2 eggs

Heat the butter and milk together in a small saucepan until the butter is melted. Set aside to let it cool a bit. In a dish, put the water, yeast, and 1 T of sugar and let it sit for at least 10 minutes until it's foamy. In a large bowl, combine the flour, salt, and 1/4 c sugar. In the the bowl of your mixer, combine 2 eggs, the yeast mixture, and the milk/butter mixture. Once combined, slowly add the flour by 1/2 c increments until it forms a nice dough. The dough should be sticky, but pull clean away from the sides of the mixing bowl. Let the dough rise for one hour (and double in size) before forming it into whatever kind of roll you need. (For the monkey bread, cut it into the little shapes now.) Before baking, let the dough rise one more hour. Unless you're impatient, because I didn't let the monkey bread rise a second time, and it was still delicious. For the most part, these rolls should bake at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, but the monkey bread recipe is different, so just adjust accordingly.