Cinnamon rolls with walnuts or The Baker Rises II

If coffee were illegal, I'd have to serve a hundred years jail sentence. Note that whenever I write coffee, I mean dark, strong, black coffee. The darkest you'll ever imagine. I guess it's true what they say: once you go black, you never go back. At least the same happened with the dark chocolate. Pardon my cheap joke.

So here below (and above) you can see my very first cinnamon rolls (to non-believers: told you I could do it!). They were suprisingly easy to make (yet so many recipes are suprisingly easy once you actually make them).

You know how I don't usually write the recipe, but I'm thinking it could be useful although this is something you find all over the Internet. However, it's tasty tested and it's the recipe I found on Make My Lemonade (top cooking/DIY/beauty blogs if you ask me).

  Here we go. For the dough, you'll need:

    600 gr all purpose flour
    240 ml warm milk
    1 egg
    1 tablespoon and a half traditional yeast (translating the recipe now made me realized I used only one tablespoon and it worked just fine)
    75 gr sugar
    1 teaspoon vanilla extract
    75 gr melted butter
    1 pinch of salt
     50 grams walnuts or other nuts (optional)

Mix the yeast with the warm milk and leave it until it's well dissolved. Add all the ingredients in a bowl and mix vigorously until you obtain the dough. Put it in another bowl greased with a bit of oil, cover it with plastic wrapper and leave it one hour aside, room temperature.

Filling:

170 g brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
60 gr melted butter

Mix all the ingredients above and when the dough is ready, make a rectangle and spread the filling on it without reaching its margins. Roll it tightly on its length, then cut in equal slices (mine were 2,5 cm thick. Note that you'll place the slices horizontally). Once you place all of them in a baking tray, leave them aside for another 45 minutes. Preheat oven at 175 degrees and bake for 30 minutes until golden. You can grease them with egg yolk to enhance the colour.

 You can, of course, place them with some space between each other so you'll have separate buns. Enjoy!

Santa Claus is coming to town

 I'm a fool for Christmas. Last year everything seemed to be in such a rush. Christmas and Ney Year's Eve passed by and I felt as if I didn't cherish those holidays properly.

And yes, I'm well aware I'm writing this in October. But you know what? November's right around the corner. And hey, in November we are so entitled to talk about Christmas. Plus, for me it's already a month with several birthdays. So that means focusing on beautiful things like searching for presents while all the stores will be decorated already.

I never actually pointed my finger at the marketing side of the winter holidays. I enjoy every bit of it. Should I complain that the amount in stores triples? Seriously? :) I leave that to the Grinches, I bet there's plenty of them out there.

 

The central heating began dripping this morning yet, thank God, it's still warm inside the house. Sure, I could get grumpy and believe this ruins my whole day and week but I wait for the plumber, happy that things are not worst and hoping for the best. Yet again, I guess that happens when you get used to pipes getting broken or things going wrong around the house. You just learn that in the end things will be just fine and that you will never get things fixed if you get angry. Things are just things, they break sometimes but these are things you can replace. The most important things in life are actually those you cannot replace and the ones you have to actually value. You know, like honest friendship.

These being said, I'm heading to my kitchen (sounds like I'm going on a mission) to make some cinnamon rolls.

Love Pavlova?

Photo from the great blog Ma Recreation

So so so, my super strict diet is approaching its end. Not only because my foodie personality turned the volume higher. And higher. Aaaand higher. But also because one cannot definitely go on dieting when one wants to bake. And bake. Aaaand bake. I guess you understood so far how my brain works. Yes, it's thinking FEED ME COOKIES. 'DIP' ME IN A CHOCOLATE BATH. COOKIEEE! Yep, it says lunatic all over my face when I start talking about food. The only way curing that is, well, cooking.

So diet versus baking: 0 - 1. Also, I do have to mention that there has also been the influence of a friend who tempted me (mercilessly!) with a marzipan treat which I took and promised to share it once I'm done with this diet which, mind you, did work its magic, cleared my skin like no other and made me lose 3 kilos in only one week.

But here it goes: diet versus marzipan: 0 - 1. This song says it like no other. So when it comes about what's a girl to do, well, she should enjoy everything and that everything ought to be AMAZING.

And then, of course, there's the bunch of recipes I've been e-mailing to myself. But hey, Yahoo's not gonna bake all those goodies. And yes, then there was Pavlova and I fell in love with it. This has to come out perfect from the oven and this is something which just has to be done. You know, one should know how to swim, light a fire, know to give first aid and cook Pavlova. Yes, I know it makes no sense, but you'll wanna do it once you see this:



Hope you had fun reading this, I know I had while writing it!

Ah, almost forgot, here's the song you heard in the video.

Spinach omelet. A love story

It comes as no suprise (or by this time it should no longer be one) that I LOVE spinach. I think eggs+spinach+mozzarella (if around) equals the perfect relationship. Always. Yet I do confess using frozen spinach and fiercely cut while making a quiche proved to have a better taste than the fresh one. Just because I don't chop the fresh one like the one you buy already frozen.

Yet a dear friend just let me know she has a suprise: fresh spinach from the market. Will I be frozen this? No, I'm so gonna eat it all today, fresh and green and wonderful. I love warm food in the morning and fresh coffee. If you don't have time for breakfast, make some. You'll be smiling a whole lot more, I promise.

Nuts

source: pinterest.com

I recently found this website where they have dried fruits and nuts at very good pricing so I already spread the word and got ready to make a list with the most wanted nuts in the house. You know how sometimes friends order clothes online and get together in order to get free shipping? Well, we got together somehow for the fun of it, I already imagine how fun it can be to open up such an order. It's almost like Christmas Day, I'm guessing.

So here it is. Once I order, I get back to you with some more information about the quality and all, but I think there's nothing to worry about. Mhhhm, tasty tested.

Because sharing really is caring

I'm currently e-mailing recipes to myself just so I don't forget that I so want to bake that cake, try that pizza dough, make that awesome cheesake. I'm drooling in front of this tumblr and I'm promising myself to try all the goodies from this blog.

dark chocolate cake, 25th anniversary

let's talk food. or love. or love about food

I think what I love most about food is... eating it. Sure I've been dieting, sure, now I'm testing the Dukan diet, but I think as long as I know I have found the balanced way of eating, this one more diet will cause no harm. It's all about reaching the weight you want and also an exercise of self-discipline. My biggest this sort of exercise was being a vegetarian for almost three years now. I have learned how to love ALL vegetables, I discovered that one can crave for brown rice with marrow, drool just thinking about a broccoli or tomato soup and never have enough spinach (yes, SPINACH). I learned to cook properly and healthy. And I discovered that I enjoy baking so much that baking muffins at 3 am during a cooking party seemed perfectly natural.

I dreamt of the perfect kitchen. Few steps from being completed, I can now say that it is perfect. I think I was thinking "kitchen, kitchen!" before even thinking "my own home". I also learned that when you finally have your own place, it feels a hundred times more like home when you fill it in with the dearest people in the world, when you create beautiful memories and also when you enjoy the perfect silence in the morning, something only yours, sometimes shared.

I have already enjoyed so many beautiful mornings here and it just seemed the fullest year. I can only be happy thinking about what's yet to come and wishing for the best, still knowing that unexpected is always a part of the future.

I love food. And I also love to love so I guess that came naturally. :) At the end of the day (or of the first year in the new home), I can say I learned to love so much more.

how to get better at everything

I really have no idea.Worked piled up yet I'm not complaining. In theory, I know everything should be super organized but here I am procrastinating one more weekend. I'm guessing is the need of taking a break from everything or fear of starting it all over again. Maybe it's a small pause, I have no idea. I'm talking about WOLF 25, of course. Everything else I can manage, so far. Of course, there's the house, so many things which still need to be done. So although Christmas is in 3 months from now, I can definitely say that all I want for this Christmas is to have many things done and my friends joining the parties again because I miss having them over and enjoying lots of home cooked meals. How's everything else going for you? Are there ant wishes for this fall? Things you have on a list?