cooking

Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

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cinnamon rolls

Fresh from the oven cinnamon rolls are something special. Very little is as satisfying in the morning – especially when you’ve made them yourself rather than reverting to the cans. (Incidentally, I hate those things! The cans, not the prefab cinnamon rolls.)

Start with your favorite biscuit dough. I use a basic baking powder biscuit recipe that I’ll share at the end of the post.

Roll the dough out as though you were making biscuits, only thinner.

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Spread softened butter over the dough. You could also use margarine. I don’t happen to buy margarine; I figure something natural (churned cream) has to be better than a bunch of chemicals formulated to taste like the natural item. Anyway.

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Next, mix about 1/3 cup sugar (granulated or raw/turbinado) with about 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon. Or you could use the pre-mixed stuff from the spice aisle.

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Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the buttered dough.

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Roll the dough up, starting from the long side.

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Cut the dough into discs.

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Place in a pan, cut sides up (and down…).

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Bake at 425° for 12-15 minutes.

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You can make a glaze to go on top if you want, but I never do. These are good enough that they don’t need one!

Baking Powder Biscuits

2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
1 tbsp baking powder
3/4 cup milk

Combine dry ingredients in a bowl. Cut in shortening until dough resembles peas in size and shape. Mix in milk until dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.

You can use this dough for a variety of things: drop biscuits, cut biscuits, cinnamon rolls, and pot pie topping just to name a few.

Enjoy!

–Wendy

Strawberry-Orange Sauce

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I made waffles for lunch the other day (yes, lunch), and I wanted some sort of sauce for them – we didn’t have any syrup. So I scavenged around the fridge to see what we had. Turned out to be strawberries and orange juice. So I figured “what the heck” and cooked them together to see what I came up with.

Here it is:

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Trust me, it tastes better than it looks! I was skeptical even as I cooked it until I tasted it. Oh my goodness, it was amazing! I think it would be good for any of your topping needs: ice cream, waffles, pancakes… anything you can imagine, really.

Strawberry-Orange Sauce

Strawberries
Sugar
Orange juice
Corn starch

(I don’t have amounts because I was working on the fly lol)

Slice strawberries and place them in a saucepan with sugar. Cook over medium heat until the strawberries are soft enough to mash. Meanwhile, combine orange juice and corn starch. When the strawberries are soft, add the juice. Cook and stir until thickened.

I hope you enjoy this as much as we did 🙂

–Wendy

Vegan Blueberry Muffins

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I’m not sure whether or not this counts as a “craft” per se, but I’m going with it :).

My husband and I, after watching the documentary Forks Over Knives, have decided to cut all animal products from our diets. This has been a bit harder than I expected – until today. But more on that in a minute.

We took our sons to a farm last Friday, and because it’s so late in the season, all they had available for u-pick was blueberries, so we picked blueberries. It was a wonderful family experience, even if most of the bushes had already been picked pretty clean. We got at least 2 pints for a meager $1.11. I know, had we purchased those same berries in the store, it would have cost us at least $8. Fun family time + cheaper berries = big win!

The trick with so many blueberries, though, is that I don’t particularly like them, except in baked goods. I know they’re really healthy with all their antioxidants etc., but I’ve never enjoyed raw blueberries, so my mind was immediately trying to think of what we could use them for. The kids like the raw okay, but hubby (after a huge blueberry picking trip as a child where they literally ate nothing but blueberries and blueberry-inspired baked goods for several days) isn’t overly fond of them, either, so unless I cooked something with them, I knew a lot of them would go to waste. Even at a savings of almost $7, I couldn’t let that happen.

Since this was after we adopted the vegan lifestyle, however, I was at a loss as to how to make muffins (the standard blueberry fare :)) without milk or eggs. A simple Google search led me to this recipe, which was so easy I knew I had to try it. It’s made using ingredients commonly found in a standard kitchen; all I had to buy was the margarine (we’ve been butter people for years) and applesauce. These used about half of the berries we had, so I went over to another site and found a wonderful recipe for vegan waffles and added the rest of the berries to that for breakfast one morning (unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the waffles, though). Yum!

Back to that comment about finally finding our way in this new lifestyle today. I found a documentary on Amazon (I love having a Prime membership!) yesterday morning – while I was nursing Baby E and wishing to be asleep, lol – from one of the guys who did Forks Over Knives called “Forks Over Knives presents The Engine 2 Kitchen Rescue with Rip Esselstyn” and watched it. It was really good; I highly recommend it. In it, he went to two families’ homes and taught them the basics of this lifestyle: they went shopping for a day’s worth of groceries, and then he taught them how to use those whole ingredients to make delicious meals. Believe me when I say the meals were amazing looking! Or better yet, go watch the film yourself :). We’ve committed to taking his 28-day challenge (starting today) and have had two of the meals from his site so far; both are some of the best food I’ve had in ages, especially since going vegan. Head on over to his site if you’re interested in more information on this plant-based, whole foods lifestyle :).

Until next time…