On Sweetness

 Weekend Sweet Rolls for my Sweeties…

 

Tweaking recipes over the years this is what I now do:

Sweet Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Vanilla Glaze

5 cups flour
add 1/2 stick of butter (melted) and put in mixer with dough hook
On stove warm 2 cups milk
(You want it to be warm, but cool enough to stick your finger in and not be burned if you count to 10)
To this add 3 1/4 teaspoons of yeast and about 1/4 cup of sugar (I use Mexican cane sugar instead of white sugar in everything.)
In a small cup beat 2 eggs
Add milk mixture and eggs to flour mixture and blend.
If dough is really sticky add enough flour to make it still moist but where you can touch it and
not have sticky fingers (it’s okay if it’s more on the sticky side now because you can add flour later when your knead.)
Let rise about 15 minutes (would be better to let rise til double, but we are impatient.)
Knead dough on floured surface.  Add flour to make a nice dough if it’s sticky.  Knead until you have a pretty, soft dough.
Roll out into a large rectangle (about 18 x 20)
Brush with melted butter and then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (you can add nuts or chocolate chips or raisins if you want to.)
Roll up from long side pressing as you go.
Cut into about 1 inch pieces and place cut side down in a greased baking dish.
Let rise at least another 15 minutes (or ideally until doubled.)
Bake at 350 until light golden brown.
Pour or brush glaze over rolls while warm.

Glaze
About 1/4 cup of melted butter (more or less)
Add powdered sugar (1-2 cups, again more or less)
thin with orange juice and add about 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

 

On 95 Cupcakes

This weekend we celebrated my grandpa’s 95th birthday!
My Popie is an amazing guy.  Smart, funny, and kind.  
It was great to get some of the family together- we don’t do it enough it seems. 

We had a red, white, and blue themed BBQ lunch.  Mom used baskets and apple crates from her house for decoration and storage.  We bought yellow mums, red peppers, and black-eyed susans in pots to use as flowers so we wouldn’t waste anything.  Mom had a ton of red white and blue fabric she’d bought to make a quilt and we used that on serving tables and just brown craft paper from the hardware store on the tables.  Turned out really cute!  We made banners out of twine and strips of torn fabric which were adorable. 

I’d made ten dozen cupcakes!  Vanilla Bean, Lemon-Lime, Chocolate Caramel, S’mores, and Coconut!  Look for more pictures and recipes soon on the cooking blog.

Of course my camera decided to protests AND my phone’s memory was full so I couldn’t take any pictures.  The ones above my ten year old took with his camera!  

DNA cookies

My daughter wanted me to make cookies for her biology class party and this is what we came up with…

DNA Cookies

I used this same recipe for sugar cookies.  (I used unbleached cane sugar instead of white sugar in the cookies.)  I ended up making royal icing because I was afraid a regular soft icing would not last in the heat and transport.  Hope they like them!

On sweet goodness

I made up a recipe for sweet rolls today because my impatient husband and son wanted sweet rolls “NOW!”  I didn’t want to make the short cut recipe I usually do when we want sweet rolls quickly- so I improvised by using the ratios I use on my pizza crust.  They ended up being better than almost all the other recipes we usually use!   After breakfast I had 4 left out of a pan of 15…
(It also made a small pan with 6 small ones in it that I’ll freeze.)

The results…..

What I did:

Sweet Cinnamon Rolls with Orange Vanilla Glaze

5 cups flour
add 1/2 stick of butter (melted) and put in mixer with dough hook
On stove warm 2 cups milk
(You want it to be warm, but cool enough to stick your finger in and not be burned if you count to 10)
To this add 3 1/4 teaspoons of yeast and about 1/4 cup of sugar (I use Mexican cane sugar instead of white sugar in everything.)
In a small cup beat 2 eggs
Add milk mixture and eggs to flour mixture and blend. 
If dough is really sticky add enough flour to make it still moist but where you can touch it and
not have sticky fingers (it’s okay if it’s more on the sticky side now because you can add flour later when your knead.)
Let rise about 15 minutes (would be better to let rise til double, but we are impatient.)
Knead dough on floured surface.  Add flour to make a nice dough if it’s sticky.  Knead until you have a pretty, soft dough. 
Roll out into a large rectangle (about 18 x 20)
Brush with melted butter and then sprinkle with cinnamon sugar (you can add nuts or chocolate chips or raisins if you want to.)
Roll up from long side pressing as you go. 
Cut into about 1 inch pieces and place cut side down in a greased baking dish.
Let rise at least another 15 minutes (or ideally until doubled.)
Bake at 350 until light golden brown. 
Pour or brush glaze over rolls while warm.

Glaze
About 1/4 cup of melted butter (more or less)
Add powdered sugar (1-2 cups, again more or less)
thin with orange juice and add about 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Easter Sugar Cookies

Sugar Cookies we made for Easter

 For Easter we made some sugar cookies to take to my in-laws.  I used a cookie recipe my daughter found for me online, from AllRecipes, which really worked well.  I cooked them a little too long on a few of the batches (see the dark edges?)
I had some fondant from a past project, and rolled it out and cut it to go on the cookies, then we dusted some with sparkly sugar (natural food colorings.)  Came out pretty cute (cuter than my bad pictures…)  I had some that looked like bunnies and those were really cute but the kids ate them before I got a picture!

Who said Brown Eggs Can’t be Pretty?

Indiana Jones Cupcakes


Here were the cupcakes from my 6 yr old’s birthday in December (yes, I am very behind!)

maps, crystal skull, hats, whips, snakes…

The Crystal Skull

More hats, snakes, coins, flowers for the girls

He wanted Indiana Jones (of course) so we all pitched in to make little fondant toppers.   The hats and whips (all brown things) we made from warming Tootsie Rolls in the microwave for about 6 seconds  then shaping.  The rest was regular fondant that we painted with petal dust or food markers.   The cake was just Devil’s Food with chocolate buttercream icing.  I sprinkled crushed Oreos on top to make “dirt.”
It was fun and I think they came out really cute!