Funny-Face Hamburgers

For the main nibble at a gal pal get together at my place, I made Funny-Face Hamburgers.
They were the 3rd place prize winner in the junior division of the 1950 second Pillsbury Grand National Bake Off, submitted by 12 year old Barbara Maddock of Los Angeles, Ca.

(click image to enlarge recipe)

These things took so long to make, so many steps!  Barbara must have had nothing else to occupy her evenings after school but to come up with complicated recipes.  I got a head start on them the day before by making the filling.  The dough is interesting because you combine a bunch of stuff...shortening, sugar, salt, yeast, egg, and scalded milk in a sauce pan on the stove...then add the flour...then knead into dough, then cut out rounds, then add melted butter, filling, and sealing them. Then making their weird hair.  It looks like it's just ground meat but it's actually milked down shredded bread with brown sugar and cinnamon! Where did this kid come up with this?  Then cut slits for facial features and add raisins.  Raisins with ground meat?  And brown sugar cinnamon wigs. Then they have to rise for 45 minutes before baking.  I didn't do the extra step of buying and cutting pimiento into mouths.  Raisins work just fine even if they look like something from Pink Floyd's The Wall.  Teachers, leave those kids alone...they have bizarre recipes to construct!
Honestly I had plans all along for my friend and I to pop out the raisins and make funny faces with  

Mr. Potato Head accessories.

Serving suggestion below:

Even though these things took forever to make, they were pretty good.  The filling reminded me of sloppy joes and the pastry part was like a yeast roll bun.  And surprisingly the raisin, cinnamon, brown sugar elements were really good with the savory meat.  The hair looks so much like hamburger meat I think it would be fun to trick someone on April Fools with it!