Steakhouse-style soft and sweet rolls

We were invited over for a lovely sit-down steak dinner at our friends' awhile back, and I took the opportunity to try a recipe for steakhouse-style dinner rolls as an accompaniment for the meal.

These did not turn out to be the crusty sort of rolls one might get at certain chain steakhouses, but they are a wonderful example of the sweet soft dinner rolls you might well get at a restaurant of similar caliber. The recipe itself calls for caramel color powder to create the dark color, but since I had none and had no intention of acquiring any, I opted for a few teaspoons of cocoa powder instead. It seemed to do the trick, as you see.

We devoured them with butter (plain salted or honey butter), but they would be excellent with soup or stew as well, or just plain. They are sweet and darkly fragrant, so soft and with that enviable tears-apart-in-long-shreds quality that I always seek in soft breads. 

The recipe is here, and the only changes I made are that I used 2-3 teaspoons of dark cocoa powder instead of caramel color (just enough to reach the color I was looking for), I used oat bran as the topping instead of cornmeal, and I made 12 rolls from the recipe rather than 10 as stated.