Apparently I have been on hiatus.
Unintentional, but still, a hiatus.
I remember over the course of the last, what is it? 6 months, maybe?, that I thought to myself, "Well, I'll just let it go. There's no time." For writing a blog of course, not for cooking. There's always time for cooking.
The blog just didn't seem to be working for me. But way back in the spring when I first realized I had a much neglected blog, a fellow blogging friend said to me, "But you do it for yourself," and that stuck with me.
My blog writing has always been for me. A way to chronicle my kitchen endeavors and trials at new recipes. A way to hold myself accountable to whole foods.
However, just because it is homemade, doesn't mean it's healthy.
My downfall: Baking.
I love to bake.
I've always said, if I ever leave education, a bakery will soon follow. And there is so much more to bake than healthy whole grain breads. I am obsessed with perusing cake recipes, and frosting recipes, sweet roll recipes, and pie recipes...
I must remember to eat my vegetables.
But not today!
Today I have a hankering for cinnamon rolls and it was the perfect day for them. A lazy Sunday afternoon was the opportunity to indulge in my baking obsession (lazy only because I have a day off from work tomorrow and those pesky chores and case studies can be put off until then).
I had seen this clever guy on pinterest (of course):
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| image linked to website |
But naturally it was written in a foreign language.
So I went to one of my favorite recipe sources (Smitten Kitchen always provides great inspiration) for a plain old
cinnamon roll recipe and I stumbled upon this:
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| image linked to Smitten Kitchen's recipe |
Chocolate swirl rolls on a Sunday afternoon! Yes please!
But then I realized I didn't have the chocolate chips Deb required.
So, improvisation was the next logical step.
I started with the basic cinnamon roll recipe:
1 cup of milk (the recipe called for whole, but I do not keep whole milk handy) with 3 tablespoons of butter heated in the micro to melt the butter.
Add that to your stand mixer with: 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup sugar, 1 egg, 2 1/4 t rapid rise yeast, and 1 t salt
Mix for about 3 minutes. Then with mixer speed on low, add in another 2 1/2 cups flour.
Once its all incorporated, trade out the paddle for the dough hook and let your mixer do its thing for about 8 minutes.
Then you need to oil up a bowl so that it coats your dough, cover it in plastic wrap, then a towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 2 hours. (For me, since its getting on to the cold time of year, my kitchen is rather cold. So my dough went into the bathroom with the door closed, its like a sauna in there!)
As my dough was having its two hour rise, I decided I'd try out my own filling:
Sugar, Cocoa, and Cinnamon.
In the bowl went: 3/4 cup sugar, 1 t cinnamon and 4 heaping teaspoons of cocoa. I thought 3 tsp of cocoa was fine, but I had the hubs try the mixture and he voted for the 4th tsp.
When the rise was finished, I rolled out the dough, smeared it with butter, sprinkled on my concoction, and rolled it up:
Since I was already experimenting, I went back to Mr. Foreign Language's blog to have a look at his pictures (is he writing in portuguese, maybe? It's not French, Italian, or Spanish...):
So I cut my roll up the middle and immediately began to panic because the outter layers began to fall off. But I persevered any way (at least it would taste good, if it didn't look pretty).
I twisted the halves back together, and thought, "Hey, this just might work!"
The next step was to pull the ends together to make it into a wreath shape, and voila! It was oven ready! Almost.
We still needed another 45 minute rising time (By the way, baking cinnamon rolls is really pretty easy, it just takes ALL afternoon).
Then it was oven ready!!!
30 minutes later:
It was time to dish up!
Now, what do two people and a ring of chocolate-cinnamon goodness do...
Oh, help!
