Recipe: Lazy-Woman's Cinnamon Buns

Ok so I will start by saying the recipe title is slightly mis-leading. Yes, this recipe is arguably easier than cinnamon buns (but you probably shouldn't take my word for it, I've never made homemade cinnamon buns). But, just because the title says 'Lazy-Woman's' doesn't mean its as easy as whipping some pillsbury rolls out onto the cookie sheet. If homemade buns were on one side of a continuum and pillsbury rolls on the other, I would put this recipe more towards the homemade buns.

With that disclaimer I shall move forward. It was great to have a helping hand in the kitchen this past Saturday! A.H, a good friend since WAY before high school, came to visit and she leant me her helpful hand on this recipe!

I was first introduced to the recipe by another friend via facebook. Here is the inspiring recipe: Cinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Bread who borrowed it from these guys

Ingredients 


Dough:
2 3/4 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
2 1/4 tsp. (or 1 envelope) instant dry yeast
2 large eggs, at room temp and beaten
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup milk
1/4 cup water
1 tsp vanilla extract

Filling:
1 cup sugar
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 cup butter

Directions

1. Attach the dough hook to stand mixer
2. In your stand mixer bowl, whisk together 2 cups of the flour with the sugar, yeast, and salt. Attach the mixer bowl to the mixer. 
3. In a medium sized bowl melt the butter then mix in the milk, water and vanilla extract 
4. Pour the butter/milk mixture in with the flour mixture. Turn stand mixer on to Speed 2
5. Add beaten eggs and continue to mix, increasing to Speed 4
6. With the mixer set between Speed 4 and 6, allow the mixer to kneed dough for approx. 5 minutes or until the dough is well mixed and slightly sticky to the touch
7. Remove the ball of dough from the bowl. Pour about 1 tsp of oil (such as canola or vegetable oil) into the bowl. Place the dough ball back in and turn to coat all over. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in a draft free place to rise for 1 hour
8. Roll out dough on a lightly floured surface to create a rectangle about 30 x 50 cm
9. To prepare filling, mix together sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg in a medium sized bowl
10. In a small bowl, melt butter. Brush the surface of the dough with the melted butter then pour the sugar mixture evenly over the surface of the buttered dough
11. Cut the dough, either horizontally or vertically into 6 even strips then stack strips on top of one another. This was harder than it initially sounded. With our strips cut horizontally there was 50 cm of soft, sugary dough to lift off the hopefully well floured surface and onto the adjacent strip. With our 4 hands and 2 spatulas we were able to accomplish the task!
12. Once stacked, cut stacks into 6 sqaures (see the photo below for a visual)
13. Grease 2 loaf pans. Taking one stack of dough strips at a time, place in the pans so they are oriented vertically or, in other words, standing in the loaf pans like books lining a shelf (again, see the picture). Any dough that does not fit in the first pan you can bake in the second pan as your taste-tester batch.
14. Place a kitchen towel over the pans and let the dough sit for 30-45 minutes. Lesson of the day: read recipe instructions! (duh.) We didn't do this at all. But our dough turned out ok. I wonder if it would have made any difference?
15. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 30 minutes or until the top is browned. 
16. Remove from the oven and let sit for 15-20 minutes before removing from the pans. Note: You want to remove the bread from the pans before the melted sugar has time to stick. 

Recipe in Photos

Egg mixture on the left, butter/milk mixture on the right

Combine flour mixture into stand mixer bowl

After the dough has been kneeded, it is set to rise

The dough rolled out. We rolled it out on a large cutting board which helped when it came to cutting as well as clean up

The sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg mixture - Yes, you put it ALL on the dough

stacked strips of sugary dough, cut into squares

Dough in loaf pan

 

Lessons Learned

• A friend in kitchen is worth more then just the 2 extra hands - loved the time together with AH
• Read recipe instructions a few times. Its amazing what you miss when you dont read things carefully. Like apparently the eggs were supposed to be room temperature and apparently the pans were supposed to sit before baking....who knew.... not us :)
• I think I over baked my bread. It was hard on top and difficult to pull apart sometimes but it was tasty!
• This bread keeps well for a few days. You know how much better cinnamon buns taste when you warm them up? Well same here. Pop a few pieces in a toaster oven for about 5-10 minutes and enjoy!

I give this recipe the highest whisk rating because I would not have tired it without my stand mixer. That being said, I do not believe the stand mixer is absolutely 100% necessary for the recipe. 

Recipe: Healthy Back-to-School Breakfast Bars

Tomorrow marks the first day of school for Queen's undergrad and grad students! As many of you know, I am starting my PhD this year and I have, so far, made one goal - to make this first day of a four year adventure my last official first day of school for a very, very long time.... maybe ever. Now I aim to live life with the goal of learning something new every day and I have no idea where my career might go but, hopefully, this first day marks the beginning of the last degree I will obtain.

This, for me, brings a great deal of excitement. I feel energized! I will be a powerfully efficient and incredibly skilled artist of a student. 20 years of education has prepared me for this moment, the pinnacle of my career as a student. Ok maybe now I am just exaggerating....

 Here's strategy #1 to being an effective student... have a good plan for breakfasts. Nothing prepares you better for a long day of mental and physical exertion than a well-balanced, healthy and (most importantly) quick breakfast. Enjoy these bars with a berry protein shake brought to you by the Bullet Express (my next favourite kitchen appliance).

Ingredients 

3 cups rolled oats

1/2 cup of uncooked quinoa 

1/2 cup of unsalted sunflower seeds 

1/2 cup honey 

1 ripe banana, mashed

3 egg whites 

1/8 cup of orange juice 

~1/4 cup of additives of choice such as dried cranberries, other dried fruit, chocolate chips etc. 

Directions 

1. Set the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper 
2. In a medium sized bowl, mix together oats, quinoa, and seeds. 
3. In the stand mixer bowl combine mashed banana and honey. Secure the bowl and the wire whisk to the stand mixer. Turn on to Speed 10 for 2 minutes in order to mash up the banana even more. Once mixture is smooth, reduce speed to Speed 4 and add egg whites and orange juice. Mix until just combined. 
4. Turn the stand mixer off and switch from the wire whisk to the flat whisk. Add dry ingredients to the stand mixer bowl and mix contents together for 3 minutes at Speed 5. Add in additives of choice and mix until just combined. 
5. If you wish to make a few different types of bars, for example I made cranberry-only, chocolate chip-only and cranberry-chocolate chip varieties, divide the batter into separate bowls before adding the additives of choice. 
6. Using about 2 Tbsp of dough at a time, roll between palms to form a cylinder. Place on cookie sheet and press with fingers to flatten into a bar. 
7. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until the bottoms are a golden brown
8. Rap up each bar individually with plastic wrap for a quick grab-on-the-go breakfast. Bars can be frozen or kept at room temperature. 

Recipe in Photos:

Dry Ingredients 

After mixing together wet ingredients - notice banana chunks are nowhere to be seen

'The dough' 

To make two different flavours, I divided the dough in half and added cranberries to one, chocolate chips to the other (see below)

After using up about 1/2 of this portion I added cranberries to make a third kind - cranberry-chocolate chip. 

Lesson of the Day: Turns out the cranberry-chocolate chip combo is my favourite. Next time I will make a whole batch of this combo flavour rather than dividing it up. While diversity is nice, cranberry-chocolate is delicious.

Arranged on a parchment lined pan. Notice bars are approximately 4 inches long and are pressed down to form more of a bar than a cylinder

The golden brown bottom to aim for

All wrapped up! The perfect breakfast to take on the go.

What I Learned: 

• Making your own bars is quick, efficient and healthy. In less than 30 minutes I made 24 bars that are about the same size of a Nutrigrain bar but are packed with clean, simple ingredients.
• Up to 1 cup of quinoa can be used. I suggest 1/2 a cup of quinoa after using one whole cup my first batch and realizing the bars were a little heavy on the grain. I had a 'comment' from my biggest critic saying the quinoa "doesn't get degraded by the GI" ....but hey, its good for your colon. 

This recipe receives three whisks because I used the stand mixer quite extensively while experimenting with adding the various ingredients. The mix was heavy - it would have been tiring to mix this stuff by hand.