October is coming near...

It's almost October already! Wow, time is flying by! I need to start getting ready for the kids' Halloween!

I have been busy busy. My little brother went back to Texas on Saturday after a 2 month stay with us up here on the East Coast. It was nice to see him for longer than a weekend, especially since our lives are busy now. 

Little M got his room back, and he's ecstatic about it, and actually sleeping in his bed now, instead of the floor setup that he's been doing for the past 6 months or so. I've dug out the winter blankets and they're washed and ready for the cooler weather that we'll be getting up here. It's supposed to go down to 44 this coming Friday. Brrrr. 

Let's see. What else...

We have a little tent in our backyard, it's for Camping nights, lol. We go out, throw a few logs into our DIY firepit, and spend a couple of hours out by the fire in the tent on cool nights. The kids love it, we roast marshmallows and make s'mores. Last time, we even roasted a package of hot dogs, those were tasty! Since the kids are too young for the real outdoors and "roughin' it", that's what we do for camping time. LOL. It works, if it's too chilly, we can always just scurry back into the house.

I'm hoping that I can spend some more time to the blog, and make more posts often. As the cool weather rolls around, I know I'll be baking more, and I sure won't be going out if I don't have to. 

Well, for now, I'm off! I have some italian food planned for dessert so if I don't forget, (I have the memory span of a goldfish these days)  I'll post up some of the pics and recipe too if there's any interest.

 

 

 

Cinnamon Rolls from Scratch!

A little late in posting, but I ended up with a pile of other things to do last night, so better late than never! 
I decided to make some home made cinnamon rolls yesterday, since the kids can't eat the ones from the store that you buy in the can, AND since I think those are overpriced anyway, lol. A lot of people wanted the recipe for these little guys and to tell you the truth, I sort of just made up my own. Hehehe. When I looked for cinnamon roll recipes, all I came across were the same sort of recipes, all used butter or buttermilk, or milk. I can't use dairy if my kids are going to eat it. Soooo....

I liked the way that my hamburger buns from the other week had turned out, the consistency was perfect and soft, so I figured that same dough would make the ideal cinnamon roll bread. And it did! 

So, for those of you that want to give it a try, this is the recipe for the dough:
It is dairy free, just like everything else I bake and post since my kids cannot eat dairy. 
And this is quick to make also, because there isn't any  rising time, you mix and make, then bake!

The Dough!
2 Tablespoons Active Dry Yeast
1 Cup plus 2 Tablespoons Warm Water (I used just 1 cup, and they still turned out nicely)
1/3 Cup Oil (I used regular Veggie Oil)
1/4 Cup Sugar
1 Egg
1 Teaspoon Salt
3  3/4 Cups All-Purpose or White Bread Flour
(Set about 1/4 cup aside to sprinkle on your counter top/extra)

The Cinnamon Mixture

1 Cup of Brown Sugar

1 Tablespoon of Ground Cinnamon

2 Tablespoons of butter (I used Soy Butter)

Icing! 

2 Tablespoon Butter (Soy for us!)

1 Cup of Powdered Sugar

Add in water as needed to make your consistency thinner

In a large bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Stir in the oil and sugar, and let the mixture stand for 5 minutes.

Add the egg, salt, white flour, combining until it forms a soft dough.  Add the additional 1/4 cup of wheat flour as needed to prevent the dough from sticking to your hands (if you need a little more, that is okay too). Knead the dough until it is smooth and elastic, about 5 minutes or so.

Take your lump of dough and place it on your floured counter top. Roll it out into a rectangle using a rolling pin to keep it even all across. You can cut off the jagged edges of your rolled out rectangle if you'd like to have a perfect rectangle. 

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.

Then get your cinnamon mixture and spread it all over your rectangular dough that you just rolled out. Try to spread it to cover the entire surface of the dough and smooth out any big clumps of mixture. Then you start rolling the dough up! After you've rolled it and have yourself a super cinnamon roll tube (lol) slice them to your preferred size and put into the baking vessel of your choice!

Bake for about 12 minutes, give or take a few since everyone's ovens are different :-) 

After being baked, spread the icing on and enjoy!

I can't find my cable from my digital camera so I can't post the pics yet, I'll post them later on here when I find the darned cable! 


I found the cable! Here's the photos, before icing, and afterwards!

Fresh from the oven!

After icing!

The Small pan was for the kids, super icing covered, lol.