In ourseries Saving Southern Recipes, Editor-in-ChiefKate Williams explores the deep heritage of Southern cooking through the lens of passed-down familyrecipes. Some make the butter roll from shortcut ingredients, such as pre-made pie crust or Pillsbury Crescent Roll dough, while others start out withhomemade biscuits. Either way, the dough gets smeared with butter and sprinkled with lots of sugar (and perhaps a bit of cinnamon or nutmeg) before being rolled up, sliced (or not), then drenched and baked in a sauce that’s either milky and custardy, or sweet and caramelly. It’s really not all that crazy, the butter roll. It seems to me to be a dessert that was originally made from whatever was around, with as much of whatever was around, with not too much thought given to assembly or presentation. After all, what can really go wrong when you’re baking buttery dough with more butter and sugar?

Count me among the ignorant, but I had never heard of the Southern butter roll until a few weeks ago. Hear the name and you may, like me, assume that this dish is a dinner roll or a twist on a croissant, but you’d be wrong. A butter roll is, actually,many things (and at least two different shapes), depending on who you ask and where that person grew up. Turn the dough out onto a well-floured counter. Flour the top of the dough and roll into a rectangle that measures about 12 by 18 inches. Gently spread the softened butter across the surface of the dough. Sprinkle with the remaining 2 tablespoons sugar and sprinkle with cinnamon, if using. Starting from one of the longer sides, roll the dough up as you would a jelly roll. Use a sharp knife or a bench scraper to cut the dough roll into 12 even slices. To make the sauce: In a medium saucepan, combine the milk, sugar and vanilla. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar. Remove from the heat.