Baking Day

I felt like having a Baking Day on Saturday. I had some recipes I wanted to try out.





My cousin Nikki (see blog list - Shirley's Swirlys) recently posted a recipe for cinnamon rolls. I have never attempted cinnamon rolls before, so this was quite a momentous effort. This first attempt was only ok. The finished product didn't much resemble Nikki's. I sliced them too thin, and thus cooked them too long. They taste fine, but it's clearly something I'll have to keep working on.

Jack likes to help me bake and cook. At least until he gets a better offer. He mixed up the batter for pumpkin muffins all by himself. Here he's scooping up the freshly made ranch into jars. Yep, we have already eaten the two quarts that it seems like I just barely made! He also has become quite the chef of grilled cheese sandwhiches! He cooked 7 on Sunday afternoon.

I made 5 dozen pumpkin muffins. They make an excellent breakfast. I stuck most of them in the freezer so we'll hopefully have them for a while. I mixed half and half white and wheat flour this time in an effort to make them a little more healthy. They taste just the same. I've learned that I prefer butterscotch chips over chocolate chips in pumpkin muffins. What was that I was saying about making them healthy?

I broke out my ramekins and made what we refer to as Mini-Cakes. They are larger than a cupcake, so we don't call them cupcakes. The first time I made them, one of the kids said, "Oh look! Little mini cakes!" and the name just stuck. This is a white cake mix from a box. They are too pretty to frost, so I made an icing that I flavored with raspberry extract. I guess they were good, because they were gone really fast!

At 4:00 today, I still had no genius idea for dinner, but since it was pretty warm, I decided to go with a salad. I defrosted some chicken in the microwave and cut it up into chunks to go onto the salad. I cooked that up, seasoned with coarse ground sea salt, fresh ground pepper, garlic (of course!) and paprika. While that was cooking I made a buffalo sauce:

2 T honey

1/2 c butter

1/3 c ketchup

Tobasco - I didn't measure, but it was a little more than 2/3 full of a 1/3 c measuring cup. Hows that for accurate?!?

After the chicken was cooked, I poured the sauce over the chicken and simmered for a while. I didn't time it. It cooked for the amount of time that it takes to set the table and gather 4 other people for dinner. It turned out really good, everyone loved it, and I think it will now move into our regular meal rotation. The chicken made it hearty enough for a meal, and I also served a sliced baguette that I had also baked on Saturday but turned out way too ugly to photograph (another first attempt).