Normally for Thanksgiving, I buy frozen rolls and bake them in the oven. But this year… one of my favorite food bloggers posted a recipe for buttered rosemary buns that baked in a cast iron skillet. The pictures and description made it sound SO awesome. Plus Chris and I had bought our first cast iron skillet a couple months ago and have been trying to use it more often in our cooking endeavors.

I did run into some glitches trying to find frozen pre-baked roll dough at the supermarket though. Very aggravating.. I eventually found them at a different store Thanksgiving morning, but the dough was ROCK SOLID FROZEN! So I actually bought alternative already cooked rolls as a backup, thinking there was no way the dough would thaw and then have time to rise before lunch would be served.

The dough was bought at 7am… and surprisingly, by 10am, it had thawed out just enough for me to use. I followed the recipe and placed them in the skillet under a cover to rise for a couple hours. We have a much bigger skillet than the one PW used, so I placed 13 balls of dough.

Around noon, when everyone was just about to eat, I put the skillet in the oven. The dough hadn’t risen as much as it could have, but I thought it would be okay. And it was!

And the result… (I removed the buns from the skillet, as it was scorching hot and not something I wanted to place at the table.. even with a plate underneath):

The buns didn’t come out looking like PW’s, but the taste was probably very similar! Buttery with the fragrant rosemary.. and the coarse salt was a great addition!

LOVED this recipe and will make it again and again and again!