Sugar n Spice Cinnamon Rolls

I've been meaning to make cinnamon rolls for a while now. I had some cream cheese frosting in the fridge that I thought would be absolutely perfect for cinnamon rolls. And I finally made some yesterday. I used Betty Crocker's recipe for cinnamon rolls, but with a couple changes. First, in the original recipe, you can use granulated sugar or brown sugar for the filling. I'd never used brown sugar, so that was my obvious choice. Second, instead of cinnamon, I used pumpkin pie spice for a special kick. It just adds a slightly deeper dimension of flavor. These two changes inspired my title for these rolls - Sugar n Spice Cinnamon Rolls. And my third change, instead of the glaze suggested in the recipe, I of course frosted my rolls with cream cheese frosting.

Sugar n Spice Cinnamon Rolls
3 1/2 to 4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
2 pkgs active dry yeast (4 1/2 tsp)
1 cup very warm milk (120-130 degrees)
1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 large egg
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice

Mix 2 cups of the flour, the sugar, salt, and yeast in a large bowl. Add warm milk, butter, and egg. Beat with electric mixer on low speed 1 minute, scraping bowl frequently. Beat on medium speed 1 minute, scraping bowl frequently. Stir in enough remaining flour to make dough easy to handle.

Place dough on lightly floured surface. Knead about 5 minutes or until dough is smooth and springy. Placer dough in large bowl greased with shortening, turning dough to grease all sides. Cover bowl loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in warm place about 1 hour 30 minutes or until double. Dough is ready if indentation remains when touched.

Gently push fist into dough to deflate. Flatten dough with hands or rolling pin into 15x10-inch rectangle on lightly floured surface. Here you can spread the dough with 2 tbsp softened butter, or I just sprayed it with cooking spray to reduce the calories. Combine brown sugar and pumpkin pie spice. If you don't have pumpkin pie spice you can just add some nutmeg, allspice, and ginger to your cinnamon. Sprinkle sugar and spice over rectangle of dough. Roll rectangle up tightly, beginning at 15-inch side. Pinch edge of dough into roll to seal. Stretch and shape until even. Cut roll into 15 1-inch slices with dental floss or a sharp serrated knife (I actually ended up making 18 instead of 15. It was a tight fit in the pan). Place slightly apart in greased 9x13 pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise in warm place about 30 minutes or until double.

Heat oven to 350. Bake 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire rack. Cool 10 minutes.

Here's my tightly packed rolls. If you cut out 15 of them like the recipe says, yours probably won't look so squished. I think that mine didn't get to rise as well as they should have, and weren't as fluffy as I would like. They were still delicious, but next time I'll do the number suggested in the recipe.


Drizzle rolls with Vanilla Glaze or frost with Cream Cheese Frosting. I used cream cheese frosting because I had it in the fridge and it needed to be used.


But here's the recipe for the glaze if you want to do that instead:

Vanilla Glaze
1/3 cup butter or margarine
2 cups powdered sugar
1 1/2 tsp. vanilla
2-4 tbsp. hot water

Melt butter in saucepan over low heat; remove from heat. Stir in powdered sugar and vanilla. Stir in hot water, 1 tbsp at a time, until smooth and the consistency of thick syrup. Glazes one 12-cup bundt cake, 10-inch angel food or chiffon cake, or top of 8- or 9-inch layer cake (or one batch of cinnamon rolls!).

Cool Holidays

Did you know that there are dozens and dozens of national holidays in America that deal with food? It's awesome! I found this website that lists just about every national holiday there is. Scroll down to "American Food Holidays" and check out some of the random, cool holidays you could celebrate with food! I have a feeling that I'll be checking this out often when I'm not sure what to make for dinner or dessert - there's a holiday for nearly every day of the year!

Quick and Easy Peanut Butter Cookies

This is one of our favorite peanut butter cookie recipes. It's crumbly and sweet, and oh-so peanut-buttery! It's also very simple, with only 4 ingredients.

Quick and Easy Peanut Butter Cookies
1 cup peanut butter (we've used both creamy and chunky, with good results either way)
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 tsp. vanilla

Blend all ingredients together in bowl. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto greased baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. Remove to wire racks to cool.

Yield: approximately 2 dozen.


Changes we've made: Sometimes we add chocolate chips to the dough, or sprinkle them on top (as pictured). This time, Jeff also sprinkled the cookies with sugar and flattened them with a fork. We like the fork-flattened look.

Simple Huevos Rancheros (and homemade tortillas)

We started thinking about dinner a bit late this evening, and had a difficult time deciding what to make. I started foodie-blog-hopping, hoping for some good ideas, when I came across a recipe for huevos rancheros. I didn't follow the recipe; in fact, I barely looked at it. But the picture looked good, and I came up with a simple knock-off.

Simple Huevos Rancheros
4 eggs
4 corn tortillas (recipe for homemade given after)
1/4 cup salsa
1/4 cup meatless spaghetti sauce

Poach eggs. We do it sort of a cheater way: Spray skillet with cooking spray and heat to medium-high. Crack eggs into skillet and let them cook a bit. Then pour about 1/4 to 1/2 cup water over the eggs and cover. Let cook until the white is firm and the yolk has reached desired doneness (we like the yolks just a little gooey still).

Combine salsa and spaghetti sauce and microwave until hot.

Assemble: Place egg on tortilla (pat off the excess water first), top with a couple tablespoons sauce. Simple as that!
You can use store-bought tortillas for this, or make your own. I used Maseca brand instant corn masa flour. Combine 1/2 cup Maseca, a pinch of salt, and 1/3 cup water, and mix well. Separate into 4 balls. Place a square of plastic wrap on the counter, put a masa ball on the plastic wrap, and top with another square of wrap. Flatten with a heavy saucepan. Cook in ungreased skillet or griddle 50 seconds per side. Repeat with remaining masa balls. And don't try to simply roll them out on a floured surface - it doesn't work!

Citric Acid Lemonade

As per request, here is the recipe that my family uses to make this special-occasion lemonade. It's really simple, and really good!

2 cups sugar
1 tbsp. citric acid
1 tbsp. lemon extract
1 gallon water

Mix it all together and serve!

Peaches 'n Cream Pie

Michelle bought me some peaches last week and brought them over on Saturday. I was so excited to do a pie with the beautiful, fresh peaches! But one thing led to another and I wasn't able to get to the pie until today. Unfortunately, the peaches had become overripe and lots of the fruit had to be cut away, so I didn't have as much fruit as I expected.
But I was able to improvise. I didn't want to do a normal, double-crust peach pie anyway. I went over several possibilities in my mind before finally deciding on a pie with a cookie tart crust, a creamy custard layer, and a topping of glazed fresh peaches.

Peaches 'n Cream Pie
Crust:
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp. packed brown sugar
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 egg

Custard:
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup plus 1 tbsp. all-purpose flour
1 1/2 cups milk
1 egg, beaten
3 tbsp. butter, cubed
1 tbsp. lemon juice

Topping:
2 cups chopped peaches (I would have like to do sliced, and have them arranged beautifully on the pie, but like I said they were overripe and didn't slice very well)
1-2 tsp. lemon juice
1/4 cup apricot jam

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Combine all the crust ingredients, and press into bottom and up sides of pie plate. Bake for 10-12 minutes, until lightly browned.

In a saucepan, combine sugar and flour; gradually stir in milk until smooth. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring constantly; cook and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir a small amount of the hot milk mixture into the egg; return all to pan, stirring constantly. Bring to a gentle boil; cook and stir for 1 minute. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and lemon juice.

Pour into cooled pie shell. Cover with plastic wrap to prevent a skin forming, and chill in refrigerator at least two hours.

After the custard has set, spoon peaches over the custard. If you've done sliced peaches, arrange them prettily over the custard. Use lemon juice as needed to prevent browning of peaches. Melt apricot jam in microwave, and spread over the peaches. Chill until set.
The verdict: This was a really delicious pie! I especially liked the custard layer. It was very creamy, and held its shape better than other from-scratch cream pies I've made. The peaches and custard complimented each other really well. Next time I might just do a normal rolled crust for this pie, because the crust I used here has a different texture, and sticks in the pan a bit. It took some work to get out a nice, unbroken piece for the pictures! But it all tasted great. And now that I think of it, I could always try to grease the pan, I suppose! :)
This pie could be made using other fruit and jam/jelly combinations. I borrowed the custard from a recipe that used strawberries and strawberry jelly. We thought it would be fun to try a Hawaiian variation with pineapple, banana, and coconut. And it would also work well with a crumb crust instead of pastry.

Honey Chicken Soup

Jeff boiled up the carcass from the Honey Baked Chicken a couple days ago. It made a really good meaty broth with a great flavor. Tonight we realized at 6:00 that we hadn't come up with anything for dinner, so decided to make a soup with the broth because it would be fast.
So to the broth we added: a couple handfuls of egg noodles, a diced baked potato, some frozen carrot slices, a sliced celery stalk, and a sprinkle of parsley. We ended up with a delicious chicken noodle soup. The honey seasoning from the chicken gave the soup a really great flavor, a bit different from your average chicken soup - mildly sweet, and very flavorful. We really liked it.