Homemade Cinnamon Rolls with Cinnamon Caramel Sauce

Not everything around here has been about our future progeny, although that is the vast majority of discussion as of late. Life has also gone on. Our kitchen is well on its way towards being complete, and it is significantly more functional. I'll post an update on that later this week. It is amazing how once a kitchen becomes functional, it also suddenly becomes more useful.

My latest creation occurred as a result of a popular cinnamon roll chain airing commercials. I absolutely love cinnamon rolls, but I try to avoid fast food and artificial preservatives as much as I can. In other words, I knew could make better.

I started out with the sticky bun recipe from the Hermes House Baking cookbook and then tweaked it a little to create cinnamon rolls. I have had this cookbook for years, and I love it. The recipes are easy, but seem a little fancier than your run-of-the-mill baking cookbook. You should check it out. Anyways, without further ado:

Ingredients:

Dough:
2/3 cup milk
1 package active dry yeast (I used 2 1/4 teaspoons of bread machine yeast)
2 tablespoons sugar
3 cups of flour, plus more for kneading
1 teaspoon salt
1 stick of cold butter, cut up into pieces
2 eggs, slightly beaten

Filling:
6 tablespoons granulated sugar
4 teaspoons cinnamon

Topping:
1 1/4 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
5 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup water

Directions:

1. Warm the milk to lukewarm, combine with yeast and sugar and let sit until frothy, about fifteen minutes.

2. Combine the flour and salt, cut the butter into the flour with a pastry blender to the consistency of sand.

3. Make a well in the center of the flour, add the eggs and dump in the yeast mixture.

4. With a wooden spoon, fold the liquid into the dry ingredients until you have a rough dough.

5. Dump the dough onto a floured surface, and knead until the dough is smooth and elastic.

6. Place the dough in a mixing bowl that is sprayed with cooking spray, cover the bowl with a damp kitchen towel. Allow the dough to rise for two hours, or until doubled in size. I "cheat" by heating my oven to 200 degrees, I turn the oven off when I start kneading. By the time the dough is ready to start rising, the oven is the perfect temperature to serve as a bread proofer. I used to have a hard time getting bread to rise evenly, but this technique works every time!

7. Punch the air out of the dough. Roll the dough on a floured surface to a 12 inch by 18 inch rectangle. I'll be honest, I just sort of pat it flat, the dough is very elastic at this point so rolling pins prove to be more of a pain than an asset.

8. Combine the cinnamon and sugar for the filling, spread evenly over the dough.

9. Roll into a tight bread log. Slice into 1 inch slices. Place each slice on a greased cookie sheet. If any of the cinnamon filling falls out during the cutting/transferring to the pan, just spread it on top of the cinnamon buns.

10. Allow to rise for 30 minutes.

11. Bake for 25 minutes at 375 degrees.

12. While the cinnamon rolls are baking, combine the topping ingredients into a small sauce pan. Heat over medium heat until boiling. Allow to boil, stirring constantly, for 10 minutes, until the mixture forms a thick syrup. It should coat the back of the spoon. Set the syrup aside to allow to cool/set up while the cinnamon rolls finish baking. By now, your house should smell amazing.

13. Remove the cinnamon rolls from the oven, they should be golden brown. Top each cinnamon roll with a healthy spoonful or two of the cinnamon caramel topping. I made twelve cinnamon rolls and divided the topping evenly.

As you can probably tell, these babies are very sticky, I recommend a plate and fork. Sit back, enjoy, and revel in the fact that you made something yummy AND you can name every ingredient in it.

Chicken Noodle Soup

Cold and flu season are upon us, and sadly, Tom and I are not free from its wrath. Our Columbus Day weekend was spent on the couch with a box of tissues, fevers, sneezing, you know the drill. On Sunday night I decided to make a chicken dinner. While the chicken dinner was amazing; we had mashed potatoes and gravy, squash,  homemade cranberry sauce, and apple bacon stuffing, the real reason I roasted a chicken was so that I could make the ultimate weapon against colds. Chicken noodle soup.

Yes, this is the real deal, handmade broth and everything. It is a recipe that I came up with and have perfected over the years. It is to the point that I do not know what Tom is more excited about, roast chicken dinners or the resulting soup the next day. The one thing I can say about this recipe, is that it takes time. It is not difficult, the majority of the time is spent waiting for things to boil. Seriously though, if you want to do this, give yourself a day to do it, or at least the better part of an afternoon. I am going to write this as two separate recipes, because while it does not taste nearly as amazing, it is possible to skip the handmade broth part and just go straight to the soup part. I recommend giving handmade broth a try, but the boxes of ready made broth do work in a pinch, and no matter what you are still getting a finished product that is a thousand times better than anything you would ever get from a can.

Chicken Broth
Ingredients:
The carcass of a roasting chicken, aka the bones, and what ever meat was left over on it
3 carrots
3 stalks of celery
1 large onion
1/4 cup of salt

Directions:
1. In a large stock pot, dump the remains of the chicken. Cut the celery and carrots into thirds and chuck them in too, leave the leaves on the celery. Cut the onion into quarters, paper and all, and toss that in as well. Add your salt.

2. Add enough water to cover, and then some. I use a full sized stock pot and fill it about 3/4 of the way up.

3. Put your stock pot on the stove and heat over medium high heat for between 4-6 hours. You want a rapid simmer to a boil, just check on occasion to make sure nothing is boiled over.

4. This can be messy, but run your broth through a strainer into a very large bowl, or a series of bowls and stock pots, whatever you need to do to get the job done. To avoid burns, I like to kill the heat to my stock and let it sit for a good thirty to fourty-five minutes before I even attempt this step. By this point in time, your house should smell amazing from the broth simmering all afternoon.

5. It is up to you what you do with the stuff that was strained out. Tom and I are not onion eaters, so we throw the onion away. I usually slice up the carrots and what is left of the celery and toss back into the broth. Also, go through the chicken bones to retrieve any meat for the soup.

You now have a large quantity of chicken broth. Time to make chicken noodle soup!

Chicken Noodle Soup
Ingredients:
2 leeks
3 carrots
3 stalks of celery
1/2 stick of butter
Chicken broth made above, or 2-3 boxes of the pre-made stuff
Chicken meat retrieved from the broth making process, or two chicken breasts, cooked and chopped
1 Package of Kluski noodles, which can be found by the egg noodles (if you can't find them just get egg noodles)
salt and pepper to taste.

Directions:
1. Slice the carrots, celery, and leeks into about 1/4 inch slices. Add them to an empty stalk pot along with the butter, and 2 tablespoons of salt. Heat over medium heat until the leeks go transparent and the whole mess gets really aromatic. This should be a slow sweat, not a saute. If your veggies are caramelizing or if the butter turns brown, your heat is too high. This process usually takes about 5-10 minutes. *Note: if you "salvaged" any of the veggies from your handmade broth, toss them directly into the broth, and use fresh veggies for this step. It will turn out awesome, I promise.

2. Pour your chicken broth (and any salvaged veggies from the broth making) into the stock pot and bring to a boil. Give it about half an hour, you are ready for the next step when the carrots start floating.

3. Add your chicken, simmer for about 10 minutes.

4. Add your Kluski noodles, simmer for another 10 minutes.

5. Turn off the heat, and let everything sit for a good 15-20 minutes to cool. Salt and pepper to taste, I seriously add a couple tablespoons of pepper.

Eat and enjoy! As you can tell, this recipe makes a lot of soup. Tom and I have made a pot of chicken noodle soup last us several days, we just leave it on the stove top and keep reheating it, as the flavors condense, we add more water  and end up with more soup. If you are going to try this "bottomless" soup method, make sure you bring the soup to a full boil for a good ten minutes between servings.

Apple Cranberry Pie

I like apples, and I like cranberries. They seem to get along well in juice, so I figured, why not pie? I consulted the almighty Google, and sure enough, I found a plethora of apple cranberry pie recipes. I less than impressed with most of the recipes, so I sort of combined two recipes. The end result was quite delightful, apples that are perfectly cooked, cranberries on the verge of exploding so they just burst with flavor in your mouth. It's a very good thing.

You will also notice the crumb crust. Depending on what part of the country you are in, an apple pie with a crumb crust may be referred to as "French apple pie" or "Dutch apple pie." My opinion is someone just got lazy one day and opted to throw apple crisp topping on top of the pie instead of taking the time to make a top crust. Regardless, crumb crusts are love in my book.

In terms of the recipe, I based my filling off of this recipe, because it uses real cranberries. For the crumb topping, I altered the crisp off of my apple crisp recipe. I tweaked the cooking time a little bit because I used McIntosh apples instead of gaias and I wanted pie, not apple sauce. Without further ado:

Ingredients:

Crust:
Pastry crust for a 9" pie, you can use grandma's recipe if you want, or you can just pie the ones that come rolled up in a box. That's what I do, I admit it, I have no shame.

Filling:
5 medium McIntosh apples, cored, peeled, and thinly sliced
3/4 of a bag of fresh cranberries
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
3 tablespoons flour
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon salt

Topping:
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats, from the canister
1/3 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees

2. Grease a 9" pie plate, line it with the pastry crust.

3. Put all the filling ingredients into a large mixing bowl and toss. I used a large serving fork. Be gentle, you don't want to break the cranberries.

4. Dump the filling into the pie plate.

5. Place the pie plate into the oven to bake for about ten minutes while you make the topping.

6. Combine the topping ingredients in a mixing bowl. I use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. The goal is a consistent mixture with the texture of sand that can hold it's shape if you squeeze it together.

7. Pull the pie out of the oven, drop the temperature down to 375 degrees. Dump the topping on top of the filling, smooth out to look pretty and cover all of the apple goodness.

8. Bake for 30-35 minutes until the apples are tender and the topping is crisp.

Give this pie a good 45 minutes to an hour before you cut into it. Cranberries have a lot of naturally occurring pectin, so as the pie cools it gels together quite nicely. I wish I had taken a picture of the pie right out of the oven before people started stealing slices, but pie really does not last that long in this household. This recipe is definitely a winner, and will likely be showing up again around Christmas time.

Apple Crisp

Apple crisp is one of those things that is a fall staple, especially after apple picking. Simple slice up a pile of apples, mix together a few ingredients to form the crisp, and pop it in the oven. Within half an hour the house smells of apple cinnamon awesomeness and you are risking third degree burns for a bite of awesome.

I grew up with my mom making apple crisp every September; however, surprisingly, we do not have a tried and true family recipe. So I opted to consult the ultimate cookbook, I Googled it. My one requirement was that the crisp needed to have oatmeal in it, otherwise, it just doesn't get crispy enough. As a geeky sidenote, Kindle Fire has a really nifty app that lets you save all of the recipes you find online in one big electronic cookbook. Just in case I didn't need another reason to love my Kindle. Anyways, on with the recipe.

I decided to use a Betty Crocker recipe because let's face it, good ol' Betty taught me how to bake back when I was in fifth grade and she has never done me wrong.

Ingredients:
Enough sliced apples to measure 4 cups, I used about 5 McIntosh apples
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup oats, from the canister, not the instant kind
1/3 cup butter, softened but not melted
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon nutmeg

I almost got a picture before the first piece was stolen

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees

2. Spray an 8 inch baking dish with cooking spray, I used a round casserole dish for variety

3. Dump the apples into the baking dish/ casserole

4. In a mixing bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. I use a pastry blender. The goal is to cut the flour into the dry ingredients until you end up with a mix with the texture of sand that holds its shape... like wet sand.

5. Dump the butter mixture on top of the apples.

6. Place the baking/casserole dish into the oven, and wait for 30 minutes.

7. Allow apple crisp to cool, at least for half an hour, or risk burning your mouth. I know, I know, it smells awesome, give it time, it's worth it, I promise.