Cranberry rolls and a chocolate syrup catastrophe

Our neighbors to the east have been good to us, so we decided a homemade gift was in order. I wanted to make a pan of rolls to accompany a card. Out of the refrigerator and onto the counter went my two containers of sourdough, one begun a couple of years ago from French brioche yeast and a batch of Alaskan starter from an envelope that was found in the back of the cupboard, dated 1996. It's been thriving more than a year now. I plugged in the KitchenAid, something I am using more often these days because my arthritic hands can't do as much hand mixing and kneading. Half of the starter from each jar was spooned into the mixer, and after the starters were fed and returned to the fridge, I added a 1 tsp. of yeast slurry and additional lukewarm water to the mixer with a bit of honey and some flour, including unbleached and whole wheat pastry flours, plus a dash of salt, making it about the consistency of thick pancake batter. After a thorough mixing, I covered it with a cotton dishtowel and let it grow a couple of hours. Then I added more flour, (two-thirds unbleached, one-third spelt), incorporating about one-third cup of gluten flour into the dough, which got a little more water but was deemed ready for another rise when it began climbing the dough hook, not quite a dough ball. An hour later, it had risen well. I turned on the mixer and was adding a bit more whole wheat pastry flour when kitchen gremlins went into action. A bottle of Walden Farms sugar-free chocolate syrup jumped from the shelf and managed to shatter in front of the stove, liberally distributing glass and syrup all over the floor while the mixer ran. The dough got a bit over-mixed as I ran for the broom and dustpan. Turning off the mixer and covering the dough once again, I had no option but to fill a mop bucket and go to work. Thirty minutes later, the syrup was gone and the floor was ready for holiday guests. Phew. Too tired to plunge back into roll-making, I instead turned my attention to what I was going to do with the dough. I put about a cup of almonds in the toaster oven on low for about 20 minutes while the floor dried, then dumped them into the food processor with some orange-flavored dried cranberries from Trader Joe's and a few chopped dried apricots. After a rough chop, I added cinnamon, freshly grated nutmeg and coconut sugar and gave them a whirl. I patted half the dough into a rectangle, and dotted it with room temperature butter covered with the fruit-nut mixture. Rolling it up, I used a serrated knife to cut into rounds, making cinnamon rolls with the addition of another sprinkle of Saigon cinnamon. The rolls were placed to rise two of those toss-away aluminum cake pans. After they doubled in size, they went into a 350-degree pre-heated oven. After they browned some, I pulled them out and cooled them on racks while I mixed up a little butter with sugar-free maple syrup and some confectioner's sugar (a real indulgence). After drizzling the icing over the rolls, a still-warm pan was delivered to the neighbors. Half the almond-cranberry-apricot mixture remained, and I quickly mixed it into an oatmeal cookie dough with more coconut sugar and the last of the real butter, about 1/4 of a stick. The cookies went into the oven with a walnut half topping each one. The result: Cookies to give as presents for my nephews, and two pans of rolls for us as well as the pan that went to the neighbors. The orange-flavored dried cranberry mixture was perfect in each batch, adding a piquant tang that cut the potential for the rolls being overly sweet. The last pan of rolls, sans icing, rests in the freezer. I'm still trying to decide if I'll buy another bottle of chocolate syrup.