Recipes

Cinnamon Buns

In order to prepare fully to write this post, it was necessary for me to eat yet another of the buns in question, smothered with cream cheese frosting. Necessary. For research purposes, you understand? A necessary evil that comes with blogging about food. Such is the life of hardships that I lead. (Not.)

I have enjoyed every second of the creation (and subsequent consumption) of these buns. They re-affirmed the fact that, apparently, I actually love working with yeast/kneading dough? I love it. For a potluck over the weekend, I made another loaf of X bread, which turned out better than the first time and was a giant hit. I love that I had the skills to do that. Soon, I’m hoping to set a bread-baking goal that is a little loftier than 4 loaves! I’ve conquered my fear of yeast, now I just need to practice.

The dough for these buns is sweet, stretchy, and very fun to work with. The icing is amazing, perfect, delicious, incredible. Make these, and your house will smell like a Cinnabon. Your friends will love you when you bring them a hot one on a paper towel. You’ll make new friends if you wrap one up in tinfoil for their roadtrip home (Hi Adam!). You’ll feel like Martha Stewart when you bring a plate over to someone’s house. You’ll feel like you’re building a home that smells like cinnamon. These are all awesome feelings.

Welcome to my crazy crazy kitchen life.

So who what where when how?

Who: Sweetapolita’s recipe is perfection. Very easy to follow, clear, and gets great results.

What: Cinnabon-Style Gourmet Cinnamon Buns

Where: HERE.

When: NOW.  

How: It’s simple! Make the dough, let it rise. Roll it out. Sprinkle with cinnamon sugar. Roll up, slice, let rise again. Bake. Make the icing, eat only a small amount of it, GLAZE. Eat. Sigh of contentment.

Chow time? Chow time. Happy nomming.

By the way: this is the fourth and last bread for my 2012 bread goal! I’m so excited. But who knows? Maybe I’ll tackle a few more. See the rest of the breads here.

Sweet Potato Tacos

Today, because of the fact that life is so, so sweet, I give you these sweet potato tacos. They’re not literally sweet, obviously, but most sweet things in life aren’t, are they? Take yesterday, for example: one of the sweetest days of my life, recently. Sweet because I had the day off. Sweet because the sky was a bright blue with a couple of beautiful white clouds. Sweet because I spent the whole afternoon running around an amusement park with my best friend, laughing, getting dizzy, eating poutine. Sweet because I was outside all day long, appreciating how gorgeous the day was. Sweet because I got to go up on one of those tall, spinny, swing rides? The ones that sweep you out and around in a circle? I always seem to feel so alive on those. Life is made sweeter because of days where you remember just how sweet life can be.

These sweet potato tacos make my life sweeter. They are, strangely, a conglomeration of most of my favourite ingredients. They baffled my mother when I replicated them at my family home. They don’t seem in the least bit strange to me, however it’s possible that’s because I have them at least once a week. Shall I share? It’s not too complicated.

Set your oven to 425.

Roughly chop your sweet potatoes down to cubes. Try to keep them relatively consistent, but it’s not a big deal. You can rinse them first, but I almost never peel them. I like the cooked texture of the skin.

Put them in a bowl, drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and spices of your choice. I usually add some granulated garlic. Then put in about 1 tsp of cornstarch per half sweet potato and mix until there is no sign of the white cornstarch anywhere. Add more oil if necessary.

Space out the pieces evenly on a cookie sheet. Bake for 20 minutes.

I adore eating sweet potato fries with ‘garlic aioli’ as my family calls it. Basically, put about 1.5 tbsp of mayonnaise in a little bowl and press 1 clove of garlic into it, and mix. You can add lemon juice, if you like. I usually have a little bit of this in my fridge, and I find that adding just a tiny bit to these tacos gives them a nice flavour. Feel free to leave it out!

Chop your favourite toppings. Mine are fresh red onion, cherry tomatoes, cilantro, fresh lime (for squeezing), and guacamole. I’ve started occasionally buying this “Wholly Guacamole” product instead of the fickle avocado, because it keeps longer. It’s also very tasty, unlike other pre-made guac I’ve tried.

Ready? ASSEMBLE. I usually heat the tortillas in the microwave for about 30 seconds so they get soft.

And there you have it! One of my current favourite meals. It’s simple, and delicious, and wide open to interpretation. I’ve made these with black beans, salsa, grated cheese, etc, but this is my favourite combination. Try it for yourself!

xo. Have the sweetest day.

X Bread

Bet you thought I forgot about my bread challenge, didn’t you? Well, considering that the last time I baked bread was in February, I don’t blame you for thinking that. But have a little faith in me! The 2012 goals were all chosen for a reason – mainly, to have me practice and learn to do a few different things well. So I’m hoping to accomplish them all, and then some!

I adored making this loaf of bread, and wish I knew how to make more bread-like products. I’m not positive, but for next year I’m considering a bread challenge to up the ante and let me practice bread-making skills. 40 loaves might be a bit high for me, so that number will take some playing, most likely. Stay tuned.

I’ve heard so much about this “X bread”, recipe by Pioneer Woman. She just calls it “The Bread, In His Words”, but its telltale feature is the large X you cut into the top, so the “X bread” name is more fitting. When I first saw the recipe, a while back, I was like: “Oh, it has yeast, too bad.” I used to always say that! I was fairly terrified of yeast. Like not in a “it’s going to grow and open the refrigerator door – it’s alive!!” kind of terrified. Just, I didn’t have the cojones to conquer it. NO LONGER. When I looked back at this recipe last week, I was amazed to find that it actually looked incredibly easy.

Gather: 1/2 cup melted butter, 4 cups bread flour, 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp yeast, and 1 cup of water. Add chopped herbs (I used chives) to the butter. If you’re using active dry yeast (as I was), sprinkle it on the surface of the water so it can start working for a few minutes.

Add all of the ingredients together. Like so:

Looks cool right? Like there are flour mountains and islands amid seas of butter. My kind of world.

And begin mixing together by hand! At first, your fingers will be covered with sticky goo, but soon the dough will come together and your hands will be magically clean. Alternatively, you can use a fancy stand mixer with a fancy dough hook, but I, sadly, do not have one of those. I ended up kneading it for about 15 minutes (while listening to the sultry tones of John Mayer) by hand, which is a decent workout. Seriously. I kneaded it until I could do this:

It’s called making a “window pane”, and it means that you grab a small chunk of the dough and stretch it slowly and gently. If it can become somewhat transparent before ripping, it’s done.

Form it into a ball, cover with plastic wrap, and let it rise for 1-4 hours until it’s “doubled in size”. I can never tell whether it’s doubled or just larger. Either way, I only had an hour  to let it rise, and it turned out just fine! Preheat the oven to 450.

Place in a casserole dish/soup pot/oven-proof bowl. Coat the dough with olive oil, sprinkle with salt, and cut a large, deep X in the surface so the bread can “bloom”! So much fun! At this point in the baking process, I was fairly giddy. Cover (with the lid of the dish, or some aluminum foil) and bake for 30 minutes, then remove the lid and bake for 15-30 minutes. Mine needed only 15 after removing the lid before it was nicely golden brown and beautiful.

MMMMM. And smelled divine, too.

It tasted even better! I’ve been warming it up in the oven every time I want a slice, because it’s so delicious warm from the oven. This is a delicious, savoury bread that I would (and will) make again.

In fact, I’m off to eat some right now! Happy bread-making.

Chewy Ginger-Molasses Cookies

The light in my best friends’ apartment is pure magic. Their windows look out over half of Montreal, and day or night it’s a gorgeous view. Twinkling stars, Supermoons, and fireworks at night; diffused, beautiful sunlight by day. Needless to say, I spend a lot of my time staring out their wall of windows and basking in the light reflected off of the seemingly endless mirrors that line the adjacent wall. It’s heaven.

And all that light makes the apartment absolutely perfect for dance parties, watching movies, doing your hair or makeup, and of course: baking and photographing the results. We spend the majority of our time doing all of the above. These cookies were created on a grey, dreary day made brighter by friends and food. What isn’t made brighter by friends and food?

Thanks Joy the Baker, I owe you an eternal debt for all the amazing recipes you’ve provided me, and all the laughs I get (often in public) while listening to the Joy the Baker Podcast. Also, your site re-design is fantastic, girl. These cookies were terrific: here is the recipe!

Due to a mysterious absence of granulated sugar, we couldn’t roll ours in sugar before baking. The cookies were still amazing, but I bet it wouldn’t have hurt to have the extra sparkly finish. We baked them for about 13 minutes, taking them out before they looked totally done – because that’s the key to chewy cookies! Take them out a tiny bit early and let them settle down into ooey-gooey-chewy-love. These cookies are a bit more cake-y than chocolate chip cookies, for example, but still end up having a nice chew.

Best enjoyed warm from the oven, looking out over grey skies, with your best friend. D’aww. Happy Wednesday everybody!

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