These bowties are particularly good dipped in custard (especially if it’s slightly lumpy from all the fish finger crumbs) or smeared with Nutella. If you’re smart enough to follow the Doctor’s advice and always bring a banana to a party, you can make a dessert sandwich by ripping the bowties in half, smearing them with Nutella, and slapping a chunk of banana in the middle. Both The Doctor and Elvis would approve.
Pull Apart Bow Tie Rolls
Dough:
1 cup warm water
1 tbsp dry yeast
1/2 cup sugar + 1 tsp sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup melted butter, cooled
1 tsp salt
3 1/2 cups flour
Glaze:
1 egg
½ tsp food coloring (red or blue)
½ tsp vanilla
2 tbsp powdered sugar
Mix the yeast, 1 tsp sugar, and warm water until the yeast and sugar are fully dissolved. Now walk away for 10 minutes while the miracle of regeneration occurs. Golden light won’t spill out of your mixing bowl, but you will end up with a foamy head of healthy yeast.
Add the vanilla, melted butter, and salt. Give it all a good stir until it turns into a soupy mess. Now add the flour, ½ cup at a time, until you end up with a good, firm dough.
If you have a stand mixer, attach the dough hook and let it tear away at it for 5-6 minutes. If you’re going old school, spread some flour on a clean work surface and knead lightly for 8-10 minutes. The dough should end up firm and not moist or tacky to the touch.
Cover it with a clean kitchen towel and let it rise for an hour.
When you come back, punch the dough down to show it who’s boss. Once it accepts its submission, cut the dough into quarters.
Flour your work surface and roll the first quarter into a rectangle. Trim the rough edges. Now cut the rectangle into nine smaller rectangles. The goal here is to end up with nine little pieces of dough that are just a bit smaller than an actual bow tie.
Pinch the first piece of dough at the middle. Gosh, it already looks more like a bow tie! Now cut a small line into the middle of each side. Pinch all four corners to get more of a folded fabric effect.
Finish it off by grabbing one of the dough scraps from your trimmings and wrapping it around the middle.
Arrange your bow ties on a baking sheet and let them rise for another 30 minutes.
While they rise, prepare the glaze.
I like my bow ties red, but the eleventh Doctor wore both red and blue ties, so pick whichever color you like best.
To make the glaze, whisk together an egg and the vanilla. (If you want to make two colors of glaze, pour half the egg and vanilla mix into a separate bowl before adding the food coloring.)
Add the food coloring and keep mixing until it’s thoroughly integrated. Finally, add in the powdered sugar. This gives it a lightly sweet coating without taking away from the natural shine of an egg glaze.
After rising for 30 minutes, use a pastry brush to lightly paint the surface of your bow ties. Make sure to get all the nooks and crannies, because it’s pretty hard to fix them up after the fact. (In a pinch, you can add a couple drops of food coloring to a tablespoon of water and carefully paint it on, but it’s hard to get the colors to match, and the food coloring added after the fact won’t have the same shine.)
Bake the rolls at 350F for 12-15 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.
If you’re feeling both silly and sexy, you can always add a length of kitchen twine to the back of the rolls. Just tuck it underneath the center band and make sure it’s firmly in place before baking. They won’t hold up all night, but if you play your cards right, hopefully someone will nibble it off while asking to see your sonic screwdriver.
You can find more Whovain recipes in Dining With The Doctor: Regenerated The Revised and Expanded Unauthorized Whovian Cookbook.