Cinnamon buns - yummy!

Okay. Here it is. I have to admit I have an addiction. A Pinterest addiction that is, lol :) I'm on there all the time, seeking out awesome things I can copy to my boards, probably never to be used. Okay, that's maybe not completely true. I've tried a few things. Just not enough hours in the day to try more!

Here's one I pinned to my GF Food board. Sounded too good to be true, so I had to test it out! Believe it or not, the recipe worked! Really just one thing I would change (the cinnamon/brown sugar filling), but I polished off the whole thing on my own (no, not in one sitting, I managed to spread it out over a week). Insert drool here....

Soft and wonderful and completely gluten free. Maybe not guilt free though....

You'll notice mine didn't seem to rise compared to the original blogger's. Either my yeast was no good, or the recipe failed to tell me to let them sit a bit before baking. I rarely use yeast recipes, so I don't really know what went wrong. Will have to try a few things out next time around. They still were really tasty, regardless of how they looked! :)

Here's the original recipe I used from the Mom, What's for Dinner? blog, with my changes in red. Do what works best for you, or call me and ask nicely....maybe I'll make you some :)

INGREDIENTS
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup sugar (just to clarify, I used white sugar)
2/3 cup of milk, room temperature
1 tablespoon yeast (I had bread machine yeast, which the jar did say I could use like regular, but maybe that was my problem?)
1 egg
1/4 cup canola oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup potato starch
1 cup corn starch
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 1/2 teaspoons xantham gum
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Plastic wrap sprinkled with 2 tablespoons sugar (white sugar again)

FILLING
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon

I would use the filling recipe from my regular cinnamon bun recipe, this one seemed dry. Here it is...

1/3 cup room softened butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp cinnamon

Mix 3 ingredients together in small bowl. Spread on dough.

GLAZE
¾ cup powdered sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
milk

I used my cream cheese icing recipe and just spread it on a single serving before eating, rather than icing the whole works. Here's what I used:

1 8-ounce package cream cheese, softened

1/2 cup butter, softened

1 tsp vanilla extract

3 cups icing sugar

1 tbsp milk

In a large bowl combine above ingredients. Beat until creamy. Store remaining in freezer. Can be thawed and refrozen.

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

In medium bowl, combine butter and sugar. Mix well. I put in my kitchen aid mixer.

Measure warm milk and add yeast to milk. Whisk well to fully dissolve.

Add milk/yeast to sugar mixture.
Add Egg, oil and vanilla to mixture and mix.

Sift together remaining ingredients. Add to mixture Mix very well, being sure to remove all lumps. Dough will be very soft... its ok... it is supposed to be.

Take a piece of plastic wrap and lay it out so it covers a 13 1/2" x 13 1/2" square. Sprinkle sugar on the wrap.

Lay ball of dough on top of that. Then pull out another sheet of wrap and gently lay over the dough.Roll out dough into about a 13 1/2" x 13 1/2" square of dough.

Remove top piece of wrap. Combine filling ingredients. Spread evenly across dough's surface.

Use the bottom piece of wrap to lift the edge of the dough and start to roll it up forming a long cylinder. Start with the sugary edge, which will be the center of your roll and roll toward the sugarless edge. Cut off or trim up the irregular ends of your "log" (I didn't do this). Then cut into 8 or 9 slices of similar size, about 1 1/2" wide. Place rolls into a greased round glass pie pan.

Bake approximately 20 minutes, until tops are lightly browned.

Combine powdered sugar, vanilla, and milk to make glaze. The amount of milk you use will depend on how thick you want the glaze to be. Stir until all lumps are dissolved. Drizzle over warm rolls.

A healthy cookie...who knew?! :)

Made banana muffins for breakfast today, so had to find something I could eat...checked my huge list of recipes to try on Pinterest and bingo - Breakfast Cookies! Who doesn't like eating cookies for breakfast? :)

My pinned recipe originated from this blog, I did add some sliced almonds (that's just what I had on hand - pecans would be tasty too), omitted the cinnamon (by mistake and they could have used it), and I doubled the sugar and vanilla. As I munched on one of these for a snack this afternoon, I thought even brown sugar might be a good option to try next time. Texture is a little odd once they've sat on the counter for a while. I did have them in a container, but still kinda like eating cold oatmeal...moms with small children understand what I'm talking about. For those that don't: breakfast was made with intentions of eating it asap, but you get interrupted 50 million times. So by the time you eat the last spoonful it has been cold for over an hour. These cookies reminded me of that last cold bite. I'm sure zapped in the microwave for a few seconds would fix that.

I baked them for 15 minutes...make sure you flatten them out since they won't do that on their own (the thick ones maybe could have baked a bit longer). Oh, and I always bake cookies on parchment paper, but I think this one you should grease the parchment paper...they stuck on a bit (because there is zero fat in these!). Overall they turned out pretty good. I froze the leftovers, so we'll have to see how they thaw out.

A healthy cookie...who knew?! :)

Cheesy Quinoa Mac & Cheese

Tried a new recipe from Pinterest today for lunch. Cheesy Quinoa Mac & Cheese. This is a GF dish, aside from the bread crumbs (I omitted the breadcrumbs and it tasted fine. You could use GF if you have them). Recipe I pinned linked back to this blog website.

I had 2 willing guinea pigs family members and 1 not so willing child. Adults all seemed to enjoy it! DD did not. She couldn't be convinced that it was pasta :) We were in a hurry, so forgot to take a picture of the finished product. But it looked pretty much like this one from the above blog:

Recipe could have used more salt & pepper and next time I would double the amount of cheese. I didn't add any veggies, but with the taste of the quinoa you could easily add broccoli or cauliflower. Texture was sort of like a quiche (from the eggs probably), so might even be tasty with onion or mushrooms in it. It was a quick and simple dish to make, and I'll be making this again. This was only my second attempt at cooking and eating quinoa, and I'd say this time around was certainly better! :)