Cloverleaf rolls v3.0

This recipe for cloverleaf rolls even says in its title that they are "fantastic".  This, unfortunately, was not my experience with them.  From an imbalance of liquid and dry ingredients to a lower yield, this was not anywhere near as good of an experience as I'd had on Wednesday with making cloverleaf rolls.

My notes:

• The recipe calls for 3 1/2 cups of flour, but I ended up using a little more than 4 cups, and even then I did not really get a dough, but more of a stiff batter.  I didn't want to add more flour because of a dire warning in the recipe about flour amount.  Maybe this was a mistake on my part.

Cake batter?

• There was a lot of liquid in this recipe: 3/4 c. water to dissolve the yeast, 1 c. milk, 1/4 c. melted butter, and 1 egg.  By contrast, the recipe I used on Wednesday only used a little over 1 c. milk, 1 egg, and 6 (not melted) tablespoons of butter.  Maybe this is why I should have added more flour.
• However, it did seem like a good idea to dissolve the yeast in what amounted to sugar water.  Get the yeast to really start eating before it even got to the flour, right?
• Because of the point at which I'd stopped adding flour, I ended up with what was essentially a thick batter, but a batter with gluten (there was definitely gluten forming in this stuff).  By the time I finished dividing the dough into 12 muffin cups, I felt like one of those people in the commercials for the faucets that you only need to hit with your wrist to get to turn on.  I had anticipated this and had, against my environmental science bachelor's degree, turned on the water before I started dealing with the dough.

Before 2nd rising: they look like biscuits, or something.  There was no way this stuff was going to be formed into any other shape than 'blob'.

After 2nd rising: at least they look more like rolls, now. 

They may not be "cloverleaf" rolls, but they turned out to be rolls nonetheless.

These turned out to be more like brioche: soft, buttery, sort of eggy, a little sweet.  This would have been great had I been going for something like a brioche (which, honestly, had been next on my list of breads to try), but this did not make for good cloverleaf roll dough.  The recipe had promised 12 large cloverleaf rolls, but I ended up with 12 comparatively smaller brioche.  So, this turned out to be not so bad of a result as I had thought at the start; I might keep the recipe around for brioche, but then I might just find a recipe that specifically says that it's for making brioche!