Caramel Cinnamon Buns

Mmm C'est bon! This, my friends, is what I call 'special occasion' treat. Although my husband wishes I made them every week, I only make these puppies a few times during the year, because of the sweetness to these. Step by step:


1. Make the dough. I did this entire recipe within my KitchenAid bowl, so forget about switching bowls for this or that. Creates more dishes, and honestly, nobody's got time for that! I used this recipe for the dough, except I added a bit more flour as I found the dough to be too wet, AND I cut that salt by 3/4, leaving me with 1 tsp. Ive also subbed the whole wheat flour for white flour, depending on who I make these for. Either works fine!

2. Once youve got your dough punched down, wrap it in seran wrap and stick that sucker in the fridge for 15-20 mns. Cold dough is sooo much easier to roll out, trust me. Once its been chilling, spread some flour on your workspace and on your rolling pin if you use a wooden one. Get ready to rumble.. I MEAN ROLL! Roll your dough out in a roughly rectangular shape like so:

3. Next, take out a saucepan and melt 1/4 butter. Please use the real stuff, not that turkey fattening crap. It makes a world of a difference in baking, trust me. So, when that butter is all nice and melted, and starting to bubble, add a heaping 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and 1 tsp pure vanilla essence. Whisk away, until there are no more clumps, and heat at mid temp until bubbles start forming, then take off heat immediately. Bubbles like this:

4. Take a pastry brush and generously 'paint your dough canvas'. Dont forget the edges. Youll notice as soon as you spread it, itll solidify. Its always a marvel to me how change in heat creates such change within the molecular structure of food, making it solidify, liquify, etc. Keep about a quarter of the caramel for later. Should look like this:

5. Alright I love this part. Prepare a spice/white sugar mixture. I use 1/4cup sugar, 1 tbsp cinnamon, 1 tsp freshly grated nutmeg (and sometimes add a pinch of ginger as well) as my ratio, but feel free to play around with that, depending on if you like it sweeter or spicier. Take that mixture and SPRINKLE YOUR HEART OUT! Cover all the dough, like this:

6. This part is pretty fun too. You now get to roll the dough. You remember when I said roughly rectangular? Here is your chance to make it as straight as you can. Start at the bottom, and if you have an edge that is longer than the rest, roll it very tightly until everything comes to an even edge. Then slowly and evenly roll all the way to the top. Now all you have to do is cut the log of sweet/spicy goodness into equal parts. I get 24 rolls out of that recipe.

7. The last step is a decision you have to make. Remember the reserved caramel? You can either keep it and pour it over the baked rolls, or like me, pour it over the unbaked rolls. Doing so will create this delicious crispy crunchy bottom to the rolls of caramelized baked sugar. Bake at 350 for about 25-35 minutes, until they are lightly golden on top.

 

Ooo yes I forgot, I always add an extra sprinkle of sugar/spice before baking!

 

YUM

You could top these with sugar icing, cream cheese icing, eat it as is.. but if you want something a little different, and a little less on the sweet side, try topping it with some Spiced Apple Butter, it is just delish!

Christmas time pictures

I should have titled this pictures in the month of December. Oh well, too lazy to change it.

Place setting for one of my good friends' birthday!

Cupcake tower (cranberry orange white chocolate)

festive salad with apples clementines cheddar and cranberries

Christmas Eve supper, brown rice with garlic mushrooms and shirmps

Quick topping for apple spice rhum caqke: melt some butter, toss in apple slices and pecans, add some brown sugar, pour over cake. BAM instant fancy thing.

I had dinner with Captain America at our annual D&D Christmas feast. Ladies, I wish I could have taken a proper picture of this kitchen. It was magazine worthy. Puts Martha to shame, it does.

Bacon wrapped chicken breast in iron cast with leftover baked taters and onions. Death to my arteries!

Drizzling fast caramel over vanilla spice cupcakes. Disregard the asthma pump,
its my secret ingredient to ensure proper breathing.

 

 

My (our) direct response to this morning's snowstorm (dark hot cocoa with minty marshmallows).
FUCK YOU SNOW

 

 

Close shot of the previously mentioned muffins.

So I think for my cooking/baking inspiration for this year's December, I was hardcore channeling Paula Deen, which was, in two words, sinfully delicious. But now I must strive to be more like Sally F. Oh wait, New Years is coming! :D



whole wheat pastry

I have been meaning to finally share my pastry recipe with y'all, but in reality, so much of my pastry is done by eye, and in the notes I did take, everything is by weight, so it may not help you much! But whatever, if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly, yes? As our dear G. K. would say.

So. Essentially, take the pastry recipe you always use. Measure whole wheat pastry flour instead. Work in the butter. Instead of water, add yogurt. If you don't have enough butter, use some cream cheese also. That is the easiest way for me to put it.

Amy's Basic Pastry

1 coffee mug full of WWPF (I buy bulk bags of flour and leave a mug in there, sorry if that seems quirky! It's like... 2 cups or so? A bit less?)
1/4 c cold butter
1/4 c cream cheese
4 tbsp yogurt (or sour cream, or cream, or WHOLE milk IF YOU HAVE NO OTHER OPTIONS)

If you don't know how to rub butter into flour or how to bake pastry, you'll want to google that as well - all I can claim to help with is the conversion to whole grain.

Pictured above is my take on Jamie Oliver's Toffee Apple Tart - IT WAS AMAZING. Sweetened condensed milk was double the price of unsweetened, for a reason I can't fathom, so I simmered 2 cans unsweetened condensed milk, 1/2 brown sugar, and about 1/4 c butter until it was toffee. YES.

I also took these pictures for you during the course of my experiments:

cottage cheese and cherry jam

more cottage cheese and cherry jam... but this time, with:

a cooked date-apricot filling on diced apples, and...

a vanilla glaze

One thing I did learn from this experiment, aside from the fact that WWPF is totally doable and delicious, is that IF you want to use white flour, for extra-special occasions, using just butter and cream cheese - no liquid - makes the most flaky, amazing pastry imaginable.

lately in the kitchen

soup served in bread bowls (it looks good in pictures but really, each bowl was way too much for us to eat!)


making blueberry-coconut chutney - dried blueberries, soaked 24h (I bought them at the Bulk Barn as a snack for Ambrose, but about 30% tasted strongly of curry - ew! not nice for a snack - delicious in chutney), a handful unsweetened coconut, an onion, some garlic, crushed chilli peppers, salt, and kefir whey to ferment.



hot Italian sausage-stuffed stromboli (with carrot, leek, mushrooms and rosemary, sprinkled with salt and pepper over an egg yolk glaze)... so good...



St. Joseph's day was yesterday! We had minestrone with garlic bread (pictured above) with cream puffs for dessert - basically eclair puffs, but with a filling of ricotta, yogurt, sugar, hazlenuts, grated chocolate, and vanilla instead of vanilla custard folded with whipped cream like normal eclairs have. They were yummy but I prefer the custard, oh well!


My God-son's cracker, celery and garlic bread creation...


canning leftover minestrone in 500 mL portions.


making ginger bug for ginger ale - you can see that the bug (center) is bubbly and frothy, this was taken around day 3. Weirdly, it died after that :( Not sure why this happens sometimes. I will start again tonight and let the water sit overnight - hopefully allowing the chlorine to evaporate will give it an extra healthy edge? The failure really puzzled me, though... it's the same brands and quantities I always use... weird!


Cream cheese and butter with whole wheat pastry flour was the winner! Pictured here in galette-ish form with a vanilla drizzle, stuffed with sour cherry jam, cottage cheese, and fresh green apples. They were da bomb! Recipe forthcoming.