Cinnamon cinnabon

I saw a TV show called "Top Secret Recipe" where they tried to copy the recipe of the famous Cinnabons and as a result I got a major craving for those sweet sweet sweet cinnamon rolls! So of to the Internet in search of the best recipe of all time! And this is what I found The Perfect Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Recipe yumm! So good...

In total I got 17 sugary mind blowers (incl. the end pieces which are not so pretty but taste heavenly) of one batch of the dough.

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Dough

1 cup warm milk (I used whole milk)

2 eggs, room temperature

1/3 cup butter, melted

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup white sugar

1 package yeast (1/4 ounce) ( this is 7 g of dry yeast)

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Filling

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1/4 cup butter, softened

Spread for Cinnamon Roll Dough

1/4 cup butter, softened

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Icing

3 oz cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter, softened

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

Warm the milk up to 42 C (so that the yeast will activate). Then, dissolve yeast in warm milk in a large bowl. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour. Mix well. Dust your hands lightly with flour and then hand knead the cinnamon roll dough into a large ball.

Put the ball of dough into a bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap or linen cloth and let rise in a warm place for roughly 1 hour or until dough has doubled in size.

Once your dough has risen, it’s time to move on to the next step.  In a new, small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.  Mix them well.  Spray a flat surface with cooking spray or sprinkled flour.  Roll out your dough ball into a rectangle roughly 1/4 inches (0.6 cm) thick then spread a 1/4 cup of softened butter on the dough.  Next, sprinkle the rolled, buttered dough evenly with the sugar/cinnamon/butter mixture you prepared in your small bowl.

Roll up the dough starting with the longer side and cut into fourteen (14) cinnamon rolls (or smaller rolls, if you prefer). I cut about 1.6” (4 cm) long pieces. Place the cinnamon rolls in a lightly greased glass baking dish. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and let the cinnamon rolls rise until nearly doubled, which should take around 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).  Once your cinnamon rolls have risen, bake them in the preheated oven until golden brown, approximately 18 to 20. The ones I put in a metal baking pan I baked about 17 minutes. The dough should still be soft, though fully cooked, especially toward the center of the rolls. But I think it’s best to make a test batch first since all ovens are a bit different.

As your cinnamon rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, and salt for the Cinnabon cinnamon roll icing.  The icing should be spread on your cinnamon rolls when they are still warm, shortly after being taken out of the oven so that the frosting melts into the cinnamon rolls.  This is reportedly part of the official Cinnabon process according to some of the employees.

Eat eat eat!!! 

Testing testing...

Drooooooool...

LiLoPe

Modified Kitty Litter Cake = FUN

We all know that the kitty litter cake is a über fun cake for halloween! But you can easily modify it for other occasions.

What you will need:

• a sponge cake
• a chocolate cake

• 1 package (200g) of cookies with chocolate chips
• OR
• 1 package (200g) of cookies with vanilla filling

• green food colouring (when making it in kitty litter style)
• 5dl vanilla sauce (I have used lactose free vanilla sauce available in Finland)
• 6-12 chocolate candy bars (I prefer these choco bars available in Finland)
• a kitty litter box (unused!!) or some kind of other container ^__^
• a pooper scooper (unused again :P ) or a little plastic shovel of some sort

You can use other recipes for the cakes but here are the ones I usually use:

Basic Sponge Cake

4 eggs

2 dl sugar

1 dl flour

1 dl potato flour

2 ts baking powder

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Grease the cake pan(diameter about 26 cm). Use a electric mixer to mix together eggs and sugar into a light foam. In a separate bowl combine the flour, potato flour and the baking powder. Mix the flour mixture carefully into the egg and sugar foam. Pour the batter in a greased cake pan. Bake in the lower part of the oven for 40 minutes.

Delicious Chocolate Cake

200 g dark chocolate (at least 44% cocoa)

200 g butter (unsalted)

200 g sugar

4 eggs

1 ts baking powder

1 dl flour

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease the cake pan (diameter 20-24 cm). Melt the chocolate and butter in a sauce pan over a low heat (stir stir and stir so the mixture wont burn). In a separate bowl use an electric mixer to mix the eggs and sugar into a thick light foam. Use one more bowl to mix the flour and baking powder. Combine the egg and sugar foam with the flours stir it gently. Add the melted (and cooled) chocolate and butter mixture and keep mixing it gently. Pour the batter in a greased cake pan . Bake for 15 minutes. If you want the cake to be a mud cake bake only for 10 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling crush the cookies (choco chip or vanilla filling). Add few drops of green food colouring in the crushed cookies and mix. After the cakes have cooled take a large bowl and crumble the cakes in the bowl. Add the vanilla sauce in the cake mixture. Take about 1/3 of the cookie crumbs and add them in the cake and vanilla sauce mixture. Put the cake "mush" in the kitty litter box. Put half of the chocolate bars in a microwave safe dish and heat until softened. Bury the soft bars randomly in the cake and sprinkle the cake with the remaining cookie crumbs. (Kitty version) Heat the rest of the choco bars and modify the shape of the bars -> poo style! Place on top of the cake :D 

If you are able to restrain yourself the cake will taste awesome after spending one night in the refrigerator!

Here is the kitty litter style cake (couldn't find a pic of the one I made but here's one from Brookage) 

Here's the version I made for my husbands 30th B-day with a little drum kit on top. I didn't use the green food colouring here.

I've also made this so that there was a little pink tractor on it :) Only your imagination is the limit!

Have fun times baking!

                                                                                           ♥LiLoPe

Macaron Marathon!

I made these macarons for my friends at work on my last day :)

Pink -  white vanilla filling

Green -  pink strawberry filling

White - brown mint chocolate filling

Yummmm!

Thank goodness my sis came to help me with the filling (there were sooo many!)

I also made some extra special ones with ♥ for my darling hubby :)

I used the macaron recipe which I have used before :) The fillings were cream cheese with vanilla extract, cream cheese with strawberry sugar and for the brown one I used Betty Crocker - Rich and Creamy Icing Chocolate Fudge - and added some mint extract in it.

♥LiLoPe

Rhubarb vol. 2

It has been quite warm the past few days here in Finland. Sunshine, rain, thunder..quite like living in a green house – hot and humid. Now what would be a better way to cool yourself than with a icy rhubarb soda. Well there’re lots of rhubarb growing outside in our garden and the freezer is full of ice! Only thing I needed was a recipe since I had only made juice of red and blackcurrant and I guess it works a bit differently with rhubarb. This is what I found from Culinate.

Rhubarb Soda

1½ cups rhubarb, roughly chopped

1 cup sugar

1½ cups water

Sparkling water

Ice

Place rhubarb, sugar, and 1½ cups of water in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cook for about 15 minutes, until the syrup is bright pink.

Turn off the heat and allow to cool. Strain syrup into a large jar.

To make each soda, measure ¼ cup rhubarb syrup into a glass. Add enough sparkling water to fill the glass ⅔ full. Stir to mix, then add ice.

I also made this so that I replaced the sugar with syrup. The color changed quite much..I did use dark syrup so...hmmm well I think I prefer the sugar version-> PINK! The soda can taste a bit sweet (not too sweet in my opinion) but you can easily adjust the sweetness level by changing the amount of sugar/syrup to match your taste. Some like it sweeter than others ;)

Happy times...

LiLoPe

Rhubarb treats vol. 1

I was going through our freezer and noticed that I had some frozen rhubarb still left from last year.

As there already is a new crop growing in our garden I thought that it's time to clear out the old to make room for the new! (what I good excuse to make something yummy ^-^)

And what goes better with rhubarb than sweet sweeeeet chocolate! So I decided to make a mud cake /drool...

Mud Cake

150 g dark chocolate (44%)
50 g even darker chocolate (70%)
1ts baking powder
4 eggs
2 dl sugar
2.5 dl flour
200 g butter


♥ Preheat the oven to 200 C. Whisk together the eggs and the sugar until mixture is light yellow and foamy (approx. 5 minutes fierce whisking.)
♥ Melt the chocolate and the butter and let it cool a bit before slowly pouring it into the sugar and egg mixture (fierce whisking required!)
♥ In a separate bowl mix together the flour and the baking powder. Then add the flour mixture by gently folding it in with a spatula. I used a wooden spatula.
♥ Prepare your cake tin, diameter approx. 21-25 cm ( I used 21 cm.) You can butter it and use breadcrumbs or flour or line it with parchment paper. The choice is yours :)
♥ Stick it in the oven and bake for 12-15 minutes depending on the size of your cake tin, 25cm->12min and 21cm->15min.


Because rhubarb isn't really photo-genetic (looks terrible after cooking some time in the pan...) I thought it might be best to mix it with something...something creamy...


Chef's little helper was keeping an eye out under the table...

Rhubarb Whipped Cream

250 g rhubarb (if fresh chop them up if frozen no need to chop)

cane syrup
2 dl double cream
sugar


Just toss the rhubarb in the pan. If you are using fresh rhubarb you can add ½ dl water in the pan (when using frozen ones there is no need to add water.) Boil the rhubarb and add cane syrup. The amount of the syrup depends on your taste buds, so make sure to taste it and add more if needed. Let it cool (best is to cool it first to room temperature and then put it in the refrigerator for a while.)
Start whisking the cream and add some sugar while whisking if you like...I know I like ^-^ Then mix together the rhubarb syrup and the whipped cream.


Enjoy!

"Omnomnomnomnomno..."

                     

LiLoPe

Apples apples..soo many apples

Oh so Yummy Apple Muffins
(makes about 9 big ones)


Da Muffin


1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cup brown sugar (if you prefer white sugar I suggest 1/2 cup white sugar and 1/4 cup brown sugar mixture)
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
1/3 cup runny margarine or vegetable oil
½ tsp vanilla
1 egg
2/4 cup buttermilk (if you use milk then it's 1/3 cup)
1 - 2 cups of fresh apple, chopped (you can also use peaches, pears, blueberries, raspberries..you name it!)


Topping


½ cup brown or white sugar, which you prefer :) in the pic is a version with white sugar
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
1/4 cup butter, room tempereture
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon


¤ Preheat oven to 400 F ( 200 C ). Grease muffin cups or line with muffin liners.
¤ Combine flour, sugar, salt and baking powder in a bowl. Then add egg, runny margarine or vegetable oil, vanilla extract and the buttermilk in the flour mixture. Mix with a fork or if you are making a larger batch use an electric mixer.
¤ Fold in the chopped apples..nom nom
¤ Fill the muffin cups right to the top and don't forget the topping!
¤ Topping: Just mix together the sugar, flour, butter and cinnamon. Mixing can be done with a fork. Then sprinkle over the muffins before baking.
¤ Bake for 18 minutes in a preheated oven, yum yum...


Make yourself a cup of tea and enjoy!

Triple Choco Brownie Time!

I admit I'm a bit of a chocaholic and there I was going through my little archives of sweet sweet recipes and guess what I found!

Triple Choco Brownies

200 g butter

200 g Premium dark chocolate 70%

1.5 dl flour

1 dl unsweetened cocoa powder

50 g white chocolate, cut into large chunks

50 g milk chocolate,  cut into large chunks

3 eggs

3 dl caster sugar

♥ Preheat the oven to 175C and line a approx. 20cm x 20cm tin with a parchment paper.

♥ Put the dark chocolate and butter in a large bowl, place over a pan of simmering water and allow to melt. Keep stirring until smooth. Set aside and let it cool.

♥ Beat eggs and sugar with an electric mixer on high speed for about 7-8 minutes or until mixture has thickened and turned a very pale yellow. Pour in the melted chocolate and butter mixture and stir it gently (not too much!!) 

♥ In a separate bowl mix the flour and the cocoa powder together. Sift the flour mixture into the eggs/chocolate and again very gently fold it in. 

♥ Last but not least add the chocolate chucks.

♥ Bake for 30 minutes. Let it cool before slicing.

♥ Serve with whipped cream and raspberries....drool...

I only had frozen raspberries so I tossed 200 g of frozen raspberries in a pan and added somewhat (maybe 1 dl..some like it sweeter than others so I suggest tasting it during the process ;) Agave Syrup. Bring it to boil and remember to stir it all the time!

Nomnomnomonomon...

Melting!

I stumbled across this awesome idea while I was googling for a snowman cupcake recipe :)

The original can be found at The Decorated Cookie and there are very detailed instructions on how to make these funny cookies :) My only problem is that because I live in Finland I can't usually get my hands on all the ingredients mentioned in the recipes I have to improvise a bit.


I had some gingerbread cookie dough in the freezer which I ended up using as the "base" for the snowman. For the frosting I used royal icing (which I made!) I got the recipe from Kinuskikissa. Unfortunately her blog is in Finnish but here is the recipe for the royal icing in English:

Royal Icing (Basic recipe)

1/4 dl egg white (approx. 0.11 cup)

1.5 dl powdered sugar (approx. 0.63 cup)

3 drops of lemon juice

1. Mix together the egg white and 1 dl (0.42 cup) of the powdered sugar in a medium sized bowl with a electric mixer for about 3 minutes.

2. Add the lemon juice and the rest of the powdered sugar and mix until nice and smooth 1-2 minutes.

3. If needed add some color (gel paste etc.)

For the head and the carrot I used white sugar paste and for the orange and black color I used the icing colors from Wilton. The little twig arms are made of chocolate.

Now the only problem is that no one has the heart to eat these little fellows :D

Snow snow snow & SnowBall Cookies!

Snowball Cookies

(makes about 2 dozen cookies)

2 cups (4.7 dl) flour, sifted

1/2 cup (1.2 dl) butter, softened

1/2 cup (1.2 dl) granulated sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 cup (1.80 dl) chopped pecans

1 cup powdered sugar for dusting

Preheat oven to 325 F/160 C. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add vanilla extract and mix well. Add flour and salt. Mix until partially incorporated and then add nuts. Mix until a thick, uniform dough forms. (I had to add a little bit of butter in my dough because when I tried to make those little balls the dough just crumbled in my hands)

Roll cookies into 1" (2,5 cm) balls and place them on a parchment lined cooking sheet. Bake for 20 minutes or until cookies are slightly golden and fragrant. Allow the cookies cool completely on the pan before trying to remove from the cooking sheet.

Coat cookies with a generous amount of powdered sugar. Pour the powdered sugar in a small bowl and just twiddle each cookie in the sugar.

I stumbled across this sweet recipe from Sprinkle Bakes and I just had to try it out :) and yes they were yummy! Can't wait to try out the Icicle Candy from Sprinkle Bakes :)

I also got these extremely handy cup and tsp&tbsp measures from my hubby as a present :) It's sometimes very confusing when converting cup to dl and trying to figure out how much exactly is 1/4 tsp with a regular tsp..But no more! Now I can go totally berserk while baking ;D

   Toodles ;)

There's always room for Cookiez!

I have this recipe for "Soft Chocolate Chunk Cookies" that I found from the Internets few years back :) These cookies are like Über Yummy and sooo easy to make and most importantly they include chocolate....lots and lots of chocolate..nomnom...I've made these many many many times and I have failed only once and the reason was that I used basic butter instead of the runny margarine I usually use. It wasn't like a major fail :P the cookies were still edible but not as soft. They had become "Crispy Chocolate Chunk Cookies." Still by the end of the day the cookies were gone :)


Here is the recipe:
(makes about 30 cookies)


2 & 1/4 cups (5,3 dl) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup (2,35 dl) runny margarine
3/4 cup (1,70 dl) brown sugar
1/4 cup (0,55 dl) white sugar
1 package about 3,4 ounces (85 g) instant vanilla pudding mix
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 & 1/2 cups (6 dl) chocolate chunks


1. Preheat oven to 175 degrees C (350 degrees F.) In a separate bowl mix together the flour and the baking soda, set aside.
2. Take a large bowl and cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla extract. Blend in the flour mixture. Stir in the chocolate chunks.
3. Use two tablespoons to drop dough on bakery paper covered cookie sheet.
4. Bake for about 12 minutes in the preheated oven.
5. Let the cookies cool of on a rack.


I tend to use dark chocolate but you can use what ever you like :) The other day I made these cookies and I used instant chocolate pudding mix instead of vanilla and I put M&M's in one part of the dough..

...and dark and white chocolate in the other part

Sooo goood...droool :)