Scrolls two ways - savoury and sweet

Sometimes a get on a bit of a baking binge. I really like being able to take one recipe and get more than one thing out of it. Like taking a basic batter and make more than one cake or a universal muffin recipe and getting more than one type of muffin. It gives more options and I don't know why it just appeals to the multi-tasker in me.

One the weekend I decided to make pizza scrolls for the lunch-boxes this week. I cheated and made a quantity of bread dough in the bread machine using a bread mix that had been lurking there forever. (A bit of a tip but if you do that use fresh yeast...yeast expires and expired yeast means no rise and that's not what you want)

Then we halved the bread dough and made pizza scrolls with one half and choc-chip scrolls with the other. There is so much sugar in a choc-chip scroll that nobody needs a sweet dough with them in my opionion.

So this week the first few days my daughter and husband had savoury scrolls as their main lunch item and on Thursday and Friday they will have a sweet scroll. Easy.

A scroll is made by taking a sqaure of dough, covering it with filling, rolling jelly-roll style and slicing. In the US they call them cinnamon rolls...in Australia we used to put he jam-filled ones in acirle and call them Chelsea Buns.

Here's my version

Pizza Scrolls
1/2 quantity of bread dough
1/4 cup tomato paste
100g chopped tinned pineapple
125 chopped ham
1 cup grated mozarella

1. Roll dough into a rectangle
2. Spread with tomato paste, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover tomato paste with other topping.
3. Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

Choc Chip Scrolls
1/4 cup softened butter
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup choc chips
1 teaspoon of cinnamon.

1. Roll into  rectangle.
2. Spread with butter, leaving a 1cm boarder. Cover with other toppings.
3.  Roll. Jelly roll style. Cut and arrange in baking pan. Let rise in a warm place. bake moderate oven about 30 minutes.

Pesto

I made some pesto today. I had a bunch of basil that wasn't going to get used in the next couple of days so I thought it would be a good idea to find a use for it. I foolishly offered my husband a choice between honey soy and pesto chicken for dinner and he chose the former so I made the pesto anyway and put it in the freezer for another day.

There are a zillion basic pesto recipes out there in the universe so I won't add mine except to say that for some reason pine nuts cost an absolute bomb and seem to go rancid really quickly so I tend to use walnuts in my pesto instead. I buy them in large packs at the fruit shop as they last longer and I always have them on hand. So my recipe is basil, garlic, Parmesan, olive oil, walnuts, salt and pepper...and whiz....

The thing I like about pesto, apart from the way it smells like summer is it's versatility.

Here are some ideas for pesto:

• Pesto bread - add  a tablespoon or two to a loaf of bread machine bread when it bips and asks for "add ins".
• Pesto cheese bread - spread on french bread, top with cheese and bake. This is really yummy with soup.
• Mix with fresh tomato and use to top bruschetta
• Spread on bread stick and top with shaved Parmesan for yummy bruschetta
• Mix through cooked arborio rice and stuff into vegetables (peppers, zucchini etc) pour over some spaghetti sauce, top with cheese and bake for a yummy vegetarian dinner
• Add a tablespoon or two the mix when making chicken meatballs
• Creamy pesto chicken is a favourite here - brown sliced chicken fillet or thing and a diced onion, add chopped tomato, sliced mushrooms and soften, add pesto and some cream. Let it bubble a bit. Serve over brown rice (my favourite) or pasta.