Cinnamon & Sugar Bread

Hi there!  I know I have not been posting very much lately.  I managed to leave the battery and charger for my camera somewhere, and luckily was able to have it sent to me but it took awhile to get here.  So I have not been able to take pictures for almost 2 weeks!  But I am back and have lots of pictures now.  So today I wanted to share with you some bread that I made.  

Cinnamon and Sugar Bread!  YUM!  We made this bread at the bakery that I used to work at.  And there is this restaurant by my house that I love their cinnamon french toast!  So many different ways to enjoy this bread too!  I eat it just sliced while it is still warm out of the oven, toasted with butter, as french toast and especially as bread pudding!  

Cinnamon & Sugar Bread

Use this bread recipe.  

For the cinnamon sugar mixture, I mixed 3 tbsp. sugar and 1 tbsp. cinnamon together in a bowl and set aside.

Directions:

• Follow the directions for mixing the dough. 
• Proof in a bowl for 1 hour in a warm spot. 
• Turn the dough out onto the counter and press the dough into a rectangle.  (Picture below)  I use a 9"x5" loaf pan and I make the dough line up with however wide my pan is.  I just use my hands to press the dough into a rectangle, but you can use a rolling pin too!
• Sprinkle all the cinnamon sugar mixture onto the dough and spread out.  Leave an inch at the top without any cinnamon sugar so it will stick together once you roll it up.  
• Start rolling the dough from the opposite end, tucking and rolling tightly into a log.  
• Once you have rolled it all the way up, pinch the dough together at the seam.  
• Place the dough seam side down in the cooking sprayed pan.  Eggwash the dough.
• Preheat oven to 400 °.
• Let the dough proof for 30 minutes.  
• Bake for 30 minutes or until the internal temperature is 190°. 

Cinnamon & Sugar mixture

Dough pressed into a rectangle.

Cinnamon mixture on the dough leaving the inch border at the top.

Start rolling up the dough.

Pinch the dough together so it stays together while baking.

All set to go in the pan.

Dough placed seam side down.

After 30 minutes of proofing.

Once the top of the bread has started to brown, I insert the thermometer into the side and continue baking until it reaches 190°.

Actual temp 178°, Set temp 190°... not quite done!

Cooling on a rack.  

Mmm... ready to enjoy!  Use this bread to make Bananas Foster Bread Pudding... amazing!

And I had to throw in a couple of dog pictures!  Bailey just turned 1 year old on Monday.  The card we got her was made out of raw hide and had edible ink on it!  What a great idea.  And she LOVED it!  I got it from Walmart and it was only $1.50!  She doesn't seem to like too many kinds of treats, but she loved this!  

Birthday girl :-)

Oh and by the way... I only took the picture of her with the ribbon bow.  I took it away from her right away because I knew she would want to eat it!  She liked to try and eat everything these days.  

We went to the dog park yesterday and she had a blast!  I think she is still tired today because she isn't her normal crazy self.  Just moving a little bit slower today.  But I don't mind considering she normally has a TON of energy!  

Chocolate Chip Cookies and Springtime!

Happy 1st Day of Spring!  This is my very first post that I am typing outside.  It's after 7pm, still light and warm enough to sit in a t shirt and shorts!  Who could ask for a better day for the beginning of Spring!  It actually seems more like the first day of Summer, but I'll take it!  

Bailey (my dog) is sitting outside with me.  She basically follows me around all day long.  Even if I need to get sometime quick, she tags along every time!  She is still pretty shy, but opening up more and more everyday.  She probably only barked twice, maybe 3 times in the first week and a half that we had her.  Well, that is starting to change!  Every time she thinks someone is coming to the door, she runs over and starts barking like crazy.  She is my little guard dog!  Though I doubt she would actually do anything, but lets keep that between me and you!  ;-)  

Today I am sharing a classic recipe with you.  Chocolate Chip cookies!  Who doesn't love Chocolate Chip cookies?!  If such a person actually exists, I would gladly eat theirs for them! 

I have actually been making these Chocolate Chip cookies a lot lately.  They are my absolute favorite recipe for this kind of cookie.  My hubby loves them as well!  Once I find a recipe that he really loves, I tend to make it more often.  I will eat just about any dessert, but he is a little more picky.  He is not a big sweets guy, but he is always a good taste tester anyways!

I will tell you right now that this recipe is by weight.  It may be a bit intimidating at first to make a recipe by weighing instead of using measuring cups, but it really is best for baked goods!  Some recipes I am easily able to convert into cups, but this one is best the way it is.  The only thing you need is a kitchen scale.  They are quite inexpensive and are a great tool any baker and cook should have!  

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:

• 5 oz. butter
• 4 oz. sugar
• 4 oz. brown sugar
• .12 oz salt
• 2 eggs
• 2 tsp. vanilla
• 10 oz. flour
• .12 oz. baking soda
• 10 oz. chocolate chips

Directions:

*This is the creaming method.  One of the most used mixing methods, especially for cookie dough!

1. Preheat oven to 375°.
2. In mixer, cream the butter, sugar, brown sugar and salt until light and fluffy.
3. Add the eggs and vanilla.
4. Gradually add the flour and baking soda, just until combined.
5. Mix in the chocolate chips.  Do not over mix!  Just until combined!  
6. On silpat lined baking sheet, scoop out a 1 1/2 inch ball and place them about 1 inch apart.  I do a total of 12 cookies on one sheet.  
7. Gently press down the dough so it flattens a bit.  (See picture below).  
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until lightly brown around the edges.  
9. Enjoy!

Butter, sugar, brown sugar and salt.

After they have been creamed.

After the eggs and vanilla have been added.

Flour and baking soda mixed in.

And the chocolate chips!

Shaping the dough balls.

Flatten the balls just a bit!  This gives the cookies a little head start at spreading out before baking.

Fresh out of the oven!  

I really love these cookies!  I have made many different Chocolate Chip cookie recipes and I found this one to be my favorite!!  I hope you enjoy them as much as we do!  

Happy Spring!!  

A little bit of everything

Hi there!

Well, since getting our dog Bailey last week, I have not been doing too much baking.  I have made a few loaves of bread (which I am really getting into!) and I made some yummy chocolate chip cookies because they are one of the hubby's favorites.  

I am back in Pittsburgh for a bit.  I had to get a physical as a part of my immigration process.  You can only get the physical from a doctor that they approve of.  And it just so happens that there are only 2 doctors to choose from in the state of Pennsylvania!  Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.  I am lucky that I live in Pittsburgh so it was relatively close.  It would suck living in the middle of the state and having to travel hours just to go to the doctor!  But I got my physical yesterday and headed home.  

I got home and looked at the paper they gave me(it was one of those papers where there is a couple of sheets and you write on the top one and it transfers to the rest).  Well... I realized that the doctor was supposed to have me sign after he filled everything out.  And I did not sign.  Sigh... So I drove almost 2 hours round trip just to sign the piece of paper.  Better that I caught it now, and not after they already sent it in to the immigration office.  That would have been a major delay!

The drive wasn't a total waste though.  I stopped at Walnut Street in Shadyside (a trendy little area close to Pittsburgh) to do a little shopping.  I got some mini cupcakes at a bakery called Prantl's.  They are known for their Burnt Almond Torte.  I got Burnt Almond, German Chocolate, Chocolate Sour Cream and Red Velvet. I didn't have my camera so I have no pictures!  :-(  But they were yummy!

Last night, there was a crazy lightning show!  It lasted for hours.  It didn't rain at all while I was still awake, but it had rained over night.  I took some little videos with my camera.  They barely do it justice, but I thought I would share.  It was so cool to watch!  I love a good thunderstorm!

Oh, and please don't mind the tv noise in the background!

Now that we have a new dog, I had to get us all new Easter baskets!  This little one in front is hers, and then there is one for my hubby and me!  We have other baskets, but they don't match.  I have my Easter basket from when I was a kid (my Mom gave it to me a couple years ago) and I waited too long last year to buy Jeff one, so all I could find was a bucket!  Haha, so he had an Easter bucket instead of basket.  But since this will be our first Easter since we have been married, I wanted to get new baskets.  These actually were a gift from my Mom.  We saw them at Michael's the other day and we had to get them!  Haha.  

We saw them when we first walked in.  We had checked out, and as we were walking out we saw them again.  So we had to go back and buy them.  I love that they are such pretty Easter colors!  

I stopped by Grove City Outlet Mall the other day.  It is a huge outlet mall about an hour north of Pittsburgh.   I got this purse from Fossil.  I love all the different fabric used and the colors are perfect for Spring and Summer!  I recently went from a big purse, to a smaller cross body purse.  I don't usually change my purse too often because I normally keep a bunch of stuff in there and it takes too long to switch.  But then, I found that sometimes I couldn't fit everything into the small purse.  So... this is my new purse.  I love it!

I also LOVE stopping at the outlets.  It is conveniently located right along my drive from Pittsburgh to Canada.  Such great values.  Sometimes you find things from the season from the year before, but everything is priced so well that what does it really matter?!  I do a lot of my clothes shopping there these days!  I actually recently saw a shirt at the J Crew there for $20 that I bought almost a year earlier at the J Crew at the mall for $50.  I mean c'mon now!  The exact.same.shirt.

Oh, and I had to put some pictures of Bailey on here!  She loves to sit on the couch like this and look outside.  Whenever one of us leave, she either waits by the front door or sits on the couch and watches out the window for us to come back.  

I mean, this is so cute right?!

She is such a sweet dog, but she can be quite a handful too.  First of all, she doesn't like to go outside by herself.  We have a small fenced in yard.  Enough room for her to run around and play a bit, but she wants someone out there with her.  The past few days, she will wait for us to walk out the door before she will so we don't trick her by shutting the door as soon as she goes out, and we stay inside.  She is very smart!  Haha.  Also, she just wants to be with someone 24/7.  It has been almost 2 weeks that we have had her, so I get that it's still new, and she didn't come from a good home.  But boy, can she be exhausting!  And I know this is nothing compared to having kids!  

But for now, she is my kid.  It's funny, because at night I lay on the couch and my hubby sits in a recliner.  The dog loves the couch, so she will lay with me most of the time.  The hubby sometimes gets a little sad that she won't come sit with him.  He is so good with her.  He will lay on the floor with her, but most times she just wants to be around me.  I tell him it's just because there is much more room on the couch, so we can both sit on there.  But I have been back in Pittsburgh for awhile, so he is getting some good bonding time with her!  

Here are the Chocolate Chip cookies that I made the other day.  So yummy!  I will share the recipe with you soon.  I left it in Canada so I have to get it first!  :-)  

Last of all, here are a couple pictures of my Mom's chickens and their eggs.  She got them last summer when they were just a day or two old, and right before Christmas they started laying eggs.  Now, my parents get between 5 and 8 eggs a day!  They always have lots of fresh eggs and even give them to neighbors and family because we can't eat them all!  She has 8 chickens in total.  4 of which are called Easter Eggers, and they lay different colored eggs!  Each chicken will have their unique color of eggs.  They can be green, blue or pink.  All of hers happen to lay green eggs, but they are have their own, unique shape and color so she can tell whose eggs are whose!

The chickens running around the yard!

Lots of eggs in her basket!

Anyways, that has been a little of what I have been doing instead of baking lately!  I love to bake, but also love so many more things.  I like that I can share those parts of my life and hobbies on here too!  

Hope you have a great day!  Come back soon!

Puppies and Tea Parties!

Hi there!  In my last post, I told you about how busy I had been and kinda slacking in the blog category.  Well, my life just got a whole lot busier on Monday, when my husband and I adopted a puppy!  We got her from the local animal shelter and she had come from a "hoarder" and she lived with 8 other dogs and an unspecified number of cats and the authorities had to come in to rescue all the animals.  She is 11 months old and has not had a lot (or any) training, so we have had a busy few days here!  The first day was really tough. She was making messes all over the house, but she has gotten better and we have not any any messes since the second day we had her!  

Coming from the environment that she did, she was and still is very shy and scared.  But she has really started to open up to us and follows us around all day long!  She really is a very sweet dog and on the 3rd day that we had her, we decided we would call her Bailey!  We have yet to leave her home alone, but when one of us leaves, she sits by the door and waits for us to get back.  Lucky for us, she doesn't bark a lot!  I have never had a dog before (only cats) so I definitely did not want a really crazy, wild dog.  She is perfect for us though!  She is sleeping right next to me as I type this.  :-)

I could go on and on about her, but I won't bore you too much!  I feel like a proud Mama talking about her baby! :-)  So I will share a couple pictures of her during her first days with us.

Now for the cookies!  My Mother in law's dear friend is about to be a Grandma for the first time.  So I made these for her daughter in law's baby shower.  They were having a tea party and the Mom to be loves tulips, so I made to make some of those!  I also did some brush embroidery on them.  It has become a very popular trend in the cookie community and I love this technique!

Hope you enjoy them!

Teapots, tea cups and flowers!

I love how these flowers turned out!

This was my favorite cookie out of the bunch!

I just made some Challah bread last night that was so yummy!  My hubby said it was the best bread I ever made!!  I happen to love Challah bread too!  The loaf is almost gone 24 hours later, it is that good!  Look for the recipe on here soon!  

So tell me, do you have a dog?!  Any advice for a new Dog Mama?!  I would LOVE to hear it!!  Leave me a comment below!

Rosemary Wheat Buns

Hi there!  Feels like I have not been on here in so long!  Not really sure why I have not been posting as much these days.  I guess it's a combination of a few things.  I have been traveling a lot lately!  In the past 3 weeks I have been to Canada, Rochester, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, back to Pittsburgh and now I am back in Canada for a couple weeks.  Phew!  I have been following my hunny around watching him play lacrosse and I finally got my name changed on passport and license with my new married name!  

It's so weird to sign a different last name.  I definitely love having my new name, because it really makes it feel like we have started our own family now!  Jeff probably thinks I am crazy... I have gotten a bunch of return address labels and other things with our name on it.  And I have been doing a lot of crafting lately with all my free time, and I have really liked having a "G" mixed into the decorations around the house.  I will be sharing that craft that I made on here shortly!  

I also have not been baking as much as I usually do.  Normally in the winter, I just want to eat all comfort food (including LOTS of desserts) but I have been trying to not eat as much lately.  I mean, don't get me wrong... I still crave something sweet everynight after dinner.  But I have been starting to feel guilty about eating so much.  I just don't know portion control!  Haha.  

That being said, I have been baking a lot of bread lately!  I really love it.  I love making a fresh loaf of bread or buns for dinner.  There is nothing like fresh bread!  The hubby loves it as well.  And as I have told you, I used to work in a bread bakery.  I am spoiled now and I really only like good, homemade bread the day it is made.  Grocery store bread just doesn't cut it anymore.  I still buy it sometimes, but I have lots of time since I don't work so I love to make it fresh.  Plus, then it is so much healthier and I know exactly what goes into it! 

So, the other night we were having pulled pork for dinner, and I had some rosemary that I bought and had not used yet.  So, I decided to take this recipe for buns, and tweak it a little to make rosemary buns.  I also wanted to try to make them wheat buns.  And for my first time making them, they were delicious!!  So here is the recipe for them.

Rosemary Wheat Buns

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp. instant yeast
• 1 tbsp. sugar
• 1 1/4 cup warm water
• 1 tbsp. extra virgin olive oil
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3 sprigs rosemary, finely chopped
• 1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
• 1 1/3 cups whole wheat flour
• 1 egg, beaten for eggwash

Directions:

1. In mixer bowl, dissolve yeast and sugar in the warm water.  Let sit for a few minutes and whisk to make sure everything has dissolved.
2. Add oil, salt, rosemary and all purpose flour and mix on medium for 2 minutes.  
3. Add the whole wheat flour and mix on medium for 5 minutes, until the dough is smooth and has formed a ball. 
4. Sprinkle a little flour on top of the dough and cover with a clean dish towel and put in a warm place for 1 hour, or until it has doubled in size. 
5. Dump the dough out onto a silpat lined baking sheet and cut into 6 even pieces.
6. Round the pieces into a ball and place on baking sheet about 1 inch apart.  
7. Eggwash and let proof for 30 minutes.  Preheat oven to 375°.
8. Eggwash one more time and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the internal temperature reaches 190° and they are nicely golden brown on top. 

Yeast, sugar and warm water working their magic.

Rosemary chopped finely.

Yeast, sugar, water, oil, salt, rosemary and all purpose flour in mixer bowl.

After the first mix.

After the whole wheat was added and the dough has formed a ball.

Ready to be proofed.

Covered in a warm spot.  I put it on my stove with the light on.

The dough has doubled in size.

Cut into 6 portions.

Rounded and ready to be proofed for a second time.

Proofed, eggwashed and ready to be baked!

Mmm... fresh out of the oven!

The final product!  

I hope you try this recipe.  It is very easy.  Takes a little patience while it rises though!  But so worth it!  Fresh buns for dinner in around 2 hours!  And the ingredients are so simple!  I always have every ingredient on hand (except the rosemary, but you could omit it or add a different herb!).  The possibilities are really endless!

Baking is still my number 1 passion, but I have been really interested in crafting lately, so I will be adding some how to's of the crafts that I will be making.  I hope that you don't mind and stick around for all that I want to share with you!!   

Um... is it just me or has this year and winter been flying by?!?!  It's MARCH!!  

Happy March to you all!  :-)