Bring On The Buns!

In my house a recipe is tried and true if it is covered with enough batter to double the recipe. Such is the case with my Cinnamon Buns, they have been poked and prodded until the recipe produced Buns Of Steel!

Oh wait…that’s the wrong kind of buns. And a total lie. These are light, fluffy, baked in syrupy pecan goodness, with cream cheese frosting laid on thick.

And so now with the recipe in tip-top shape I share its wonders with you! But I’m sure you are wondering what cinnamon buns could I be talking about?

Perhaps it’s this cat.

No?

Well maybe it’s her hair.

Okay Princess Leia, I love you and all, but food and hairstyles shouldn’t mix. Ever. I mean that look has never looked good on anyone.

So maybe we could leave the cinnamon bun being to breakfast and keep it away from cats and hair?

(This is where you agree with me and I begin to type out the recipe).

Here it goes.

The Ingredients:

The dough­-

1 cup whole milk

4 ½ tsp. active dry yeast (NOT the kind for the bread machine)

½ cup unsalted butter (either leave it out until it gets nice and cozy at room temperature or microwave it for 10-15 seconds) and please use real butter, none of that “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter” nonsense!

½ cup sugar

1 tsp. salt

2 eggs, preferably of the large variety

4-1/4 cups unbleached flour

The Caramel Glaze:

½ cup unsalted butter

¼ cup spun honey (you can also use regular honey but I ran out of that-which is crazy as we had like six boxes full in our basement-and I found I liked the taste spun honey added better)

1-1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar

½ cup whole milk

1 tsp. vanilla

3 cups pecans (pecan halves look prettier but pecan bits taste just as swell)

The Filling:

4 tbsp. butter (the softer the easier your job will be)

1 cup dark brown sugar

2 tbsp. ground cinnamon

The Frosting: Now, you can always go for a simple 10X sugar glaze, but the cream cheese frosting adds such a wonderfully rich flavor that you’ll want to sing…if you hear me singing you have my most sincere apologies

4 ounces cream cheese

1 cup 10X/Confectioner’s Sugar (this amount keeps it from being too sweet)

½ cup butter

½ tsp. vanilla

If you wish to have these lovely bits of deliciousness in your mouth, here is what you need to do:

1. Heat milk to 110 degrees Fahrenheit, remove from heat, stir in yeast and let sit for five minutes. And please, make sure your yeast has not expired, I once made that mistake and made some lovely cardboard, sadly I was striving for na’an.
2. In a stand mixer with a flat beater, beat the butter, sugar and salt for one minute. If you go a second over I will personally come and throw marshmallows at you. I know, I am so scary, GRRRRR!

1. Add the eggs and beat for 2 minutes.
2. Beat in 1 cup of the flour.
3. Add the yeast mixture and beat until creamy and smooth.
4. Add the remaining 3-1/4 cups flour and beat for 2 minutes. Stick your finger in the dough (AFTER turning the mixer off), if your figure comes out clean then the dough is ready to go! The dough will still be soft, sticky, and stuck to the sides of the bowl.
5. Transfer the dough into a greased bowl, turn to coat all sides, then cover and refrigerate for 7 hours minimum to 2 days maximum.
6. While you wait the agonizingly long period of time for that lovely dough to come into its own, you should make your glaze. Combine all of the ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium heat until they come to a rolling boil (cannot be stirred down). Then pour ¾ cup into each of two 8 inch diameter cake pans. Sprinkle 1-1/2 cups pecans into each pan, and if you’re feeling particularly adventurous feel free to arrange them in a fun little pattern.
7. For the frosting: Beat the cream cheese and butter until lumpless, add the 10X sugar a wee little bit at a time, then the vanilla, and beat for 2-3 minutes more.
8. Once done with its vacation in the fridge cut the dough into quarters and roll each piece into thick rectangles. Spread 1 Tbsp. of softened butter and 6 Tbsp. of the filling on each piece. Now roll them up into long logs of cinnamon-sugar yumminess and set in the prepared pans of pecans!
9. I am terribly sorry to inform you that there is now a mandatory 45 minute rising period L you have my sincerest apologies.
10. After the torture of the timer is done bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown on top and the innermost rolls are fully baked.
11. For a culinary adventure try baking individually in muffin tins

Enjoy every bite my loves, xoxo!

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marley and Me

They Should Make Pillows Out Of Marshmallows

You know what I love? Stories! Story time was always my favorite, but it got taken out of school about the same time we lost snack time and nap time. That was a sad day. And then they took away recess and the twisty slide and closed off the fire pole! It was tragic. I think we need a moment of silence.

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Okay, now back to my non stop jibber jabber! YAY! Anyways, the point is that I have a story for you today (it even has pictures ).

It all began over the summer with a warning from some friends.

But we had faith in ourselves, we knew that, come September, we could take whatever Junior Year threw at us.

We were wrong. So our new motto: Drink Coffee and Ignore the Circles Under Your Eyes. I don’t actually love coffee all that much, so I drink about three pots of tea a day instead …I’m still not entirely sure that is healthy

And then midterms came and basically we lived in a notecard and multiple choice question induced daze. And then the week of ten tests was over, and we all just kind of collapsed.

Wasn’t that a lovely story?! My favorite part is the bit where tonight, for the first time since September 5th, my homework is done before 10:30 at night. And with track practice cancelled due to the snow, I have been left with a lot of this thing called “spare time” on my hands. It is terribly strange, I had time to do yoga, eat dinner with my family, and now I even get to blog (and it has been far too long since I’ve been able to share recipes with all of you ).

And since I haven’t blogged since August (I know, I know, CRAZY) I have more than a mountain of recipes waiting to share with all of you . So today I think I’ll start with Hot Cocoa Cookies topped with Seven Minute Frosting (AKA Homemade Heavenly Flufflike Yumminess).

The Cookie:

2 1/4 cups cake flour

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 cup unsalted butter (it may be winter and thus everything from the grass to the people is frozen solid, but you want your butter at room temperature, it’ll keep the cookies happy)

3/4 cup sugar

1 large egg

1 tsp. vanilla (If you actually follow this measurment I will personally come over and pour more into your bowl. I would say you should be shaking in your boots at the thought of it, but…uh…well…I’ve never been good at being scary, I didn’t even have scary Halloween costumes. )

Directions:

1. Beat the butter and the sugar for four minutes so that it is nice and fluffy. Make sure you apologize for your cruel methods.

2. Beat in the egg and vanilla.

3. Do yourself and your kitchen a favor and reduce your mixer to low; trust me it is not fun to find your entire kitchen (and the people in it) covered in flour! Now that you’ve saved yourself from a winter wonderland of a scene, add the flour slowly and beat until incorperated.

4. And now the waiting game begins! Refrigerate the dough for 1 to 24 hours and then roll to 1/8 inch thick and cut with cookie cutters. Personally my favorites are a nice and fat Christmas Tree, a Snowman, and a Gingerbread Man.

5. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for 12-15 minutes. Once cooled, frost with a nice heaping spoonful of frosting oh and smile, and perhaps sit down with a cookie and some tea and a book (I highly recommend The Goose Girl, by Shannon Hale).

For the little bit of heaven to top your cookies with:
Beat 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/3 cup cold water, 2 egg whites, and 1/4 tsp. cream of tartar in the top of a double broiler for 30 seconds.  Place the top of the double broiler over the boiling water and beat on high speed for 7 minutes until the frosting forms stiff peaks. Remove from the heat, add the vanilla, and beat for 2-3 minutes more.  Frost the cookies the day the frosting is made as it does not keep well in the fridge.

The Hot Cocoa Cookies were for a 12 dozen cookie order! At this point I was crashing off of a adrenaline rush as I put the last of the cookies on the platter.

My adorable parents were helping me frost the cookies. Aren’t they just too cute?!

There the Hot Cocoa Cookies are, front and center!

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marley and Me <3

Backpacking in the Backcountry and Singing About Ducks All the While

WARNING: This blog post isn’t really about the food

OHMYGOODGOLLYGARBONZOBEANSICANNOTBELIEVEIT!!!

I’m home!!!

Guess what that means?

Running water

A bed

Bathrooms

Super scrumptious food

Clean clothing

SHOWERS!

I should probably take a minute (or an entire blog post) to explain why these seemingly normal things are so incredibly awesome.

I really should.

Maybe I will.

Alright here’s my spiel…

I just spent one of the most amazing weeks of my life in the Green Mountains in Vermont. What was I doing there? Trail Maintenance of course! Camp Chingachgook (ching-a-cook) my absolute favorite summer camp of all time has these amazing Adventure Trips every summer. The newest trip combined community service AND hiking, it was like they made the trip just for me :) I jumped up and down for a quite a while before I left on Sunday because I was  bursting with I-can’t-wait-to-go-maintain-trails-enthusiasm (I’m not sure if you knew but I tend to be a very excited person, tehehe). The trip consisted of my two counselors, four guys, and me. It was epic, it was awesome, and I’m not sure I can handle any more testosterone ever again.

There are now only two more things left to do in this blog post.

 Thing One: Tell you what on earth this has to do with food.

It does, it really does, I promise! I began writing this post with the intention of merely telling you about camping food and all of its glory. But, once again, I got distracted by the amazingness of life and have started a very long ramble that I disguise as a “blog post”.

Thing Two: I will give you a day-by-day description of my life in the woods for the past week. If you like the wilderness you are going to be soooooo jealous, and if you don’t…well…you may think I belong in an asylum (which I may anyways but that’s beside the point).

Day One-Sunday:
After arriving and discovering that I was once again the only girl camper on the trip (I SURVIVED! And actually had a lot of fun chilling with the crazy guys) we proceeded to play every run-around-screaming-and-laughing-and-falling-on-the-ground-game imaginable. I’m not kidding. It was awesome. And then we had spaghetti for dinner.

Day Two-Monday:

We awoke at 5:30 a.m. (no one was happy about it) to begin our journey to Vermont. We slept the entire car ride. Once we arrived we hiked the ½ mile in to where we would be making camp. We set up our tents, a “kitchen”, and then ate lunch by a gorgeous stream. Lunch consisted of peanut butter and jelly or hummus and cheese sandwiches every single day. I will not be upset if I don’t get any more for quite some time. After lunch we hiked the 2.5 mile trail we would be maintaining.

Days Three and Four:

After breakfast of eggs and rehydrated hash browns *shudder* and the next day a “scramble” (That was supposed to have been coffee cake…needless to say a few things went wrong. What should have been fluffy and cut into slices was gummy and uh edible. I think.) The rest of the day was spent maintaining the trails. Just for reference giving four over tired and delirious boys Swedish Brush Axes and saws and clippers the size of my arm is PROBABLY NOT THE BEST IDEA.

This should never be given to a 16 year old boy to use at his discretion!

But we all survived and the only injury received was during a vigorous game of sharks and minnows where my counselor decided to ramm into the fence and then dive bombing the ground was a good idea. He was wrong. So after clearing brush and small trees, hiking all day, and getting covered in dirt we were all hungry. On Tuesday we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows (and the guys tried to eat two full cans of chocolate frosting, which was not a good idea, we weren’t allowed to mention chocolate for the rest of the trip). On Wednesday we had mac ‘n cheese. Which was really quite tasty…that is until it was turned into an eating contest and the guys were consuming their fourth bowls at lightning speed. I’m not sure I want children. I don’t think I can watch that.

THURSDAY!!!

Thursday was epic. Beyond epic. I mean all of the days were epic and there are not enough blogs in the world with room for their epic-ness, and Thursday was just OH MY GOSH CRAZYYYYY!! There were leeches that could stretch to 6 inches longs, 1 inch newts we found in a puddle, moose tracks, elk tracks, and the most amazing hike ever! We had finished one trail and moved on to the Long Trail (which includes part of the Appalachian Trail). On the Long Trail we found a lookout where you sat on an outcrop of rocks and had a view of the entire state of Vermont. It was magical. It was kind of hazy so everything looked like it was covered in mist, and the different shades of green were so vibrant and alive that no picture can show their beauty (even though I tried, multiple times).

Hey There Vermont!

Welcome to Paradise!

This was a pond we hiked to.

It was also on this day that the Duck Song came into full swing. For those of you who have not heard it, I have placed a link below. But you have been warned, what you hear cannot be unheard, so feel free to blame me if you can NEVER EVER GET THIS SONG OUT OF YOUR HEAD NO MATTER HOW HARD YOU TRY (and yet I still highly recomend listening)!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ux7uNxTfTA

Waddle, waddle

At about 4 o’clock we returned to camp and the thunder began. And a few minutes later the rain. And then the lightning. But it wasn’t until after that that the craziness began. The guys got bored. Their tent was approximately ten feet away from mine. And apparently the only logical thing to do in the middle of a thunderstorm when you are bored is to not leave me alone. During the next THREE HOURS I may have lost my non-existent sanity. It started out with them singing the duck song. Except instead of ordering grapes the duck ordered Marley. Huh? Then Mike decided he wanted to serenade me, so for the next five minutes he attempted to sing “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. It was really cute. But then they got bored again. So they started playing cards. And being foolish, I thought all was well. I was wrong. One of them escaped from their tent and started shaking mine. I screamed. Really loudly. I should probably take this moment to apologize to the people of the world whose eardrums I broke, so sorry! After that everything was quiet. Suspiciously quiet. I should have known that it wouldn’t last long. From about 6 to 10 p.m. (with maybe a one hour break for dinner, which was watery couscous-the food so nice they named it twice- cooked and eaten in darkness and pouring rain) they screamed “Marley and Me” at the top of their lungs at five minute intervals. Then continued the next morning. Wahoo.

Despite all the screaming and despite the fact that I played the same card game fifty times over, my camp mates were amazing and I had the time of my life. Not the food of my life however. According to my counselor, peanut butter, turkey, and mayonnaise, are a tasty combination. I disagree. Thankfully my house is all about food, and I’m home. And yet somehow I miss those crazy people already!

Heating water for hot cocoa!

Cooking smashed potatoes on the camp fire!

This is where we kept our filtered water from the stream.

Roasting Marshmallows!

Live, laugh, love, bake, hike,

MARLEY AND MEEEEEEEEE

Prepare Yourself, Things Are About To Get Crazy

 WHAT ON EARTH WERE YOU THINKING??? Okay maybe not you exactly, but someone, somewhere came up with these out-of-this-world ideas. I’m questioning their sanity. What compelled them to commit such crimes against the kitchen? I mean seriously people!! Get your taste buds checked out!!

Curious yet?

So I happened to be searching for a super fabulous new dessert recipe and these are the horrors I come across:

1. Raisin Cheesecake. Now don’t get me wrong, I love raisins (in G.O.R.P.) and I love cheesecake, but thinking of the two together is less then appetizing.  
2. Oatmeal Pudding. *shudder* .Please understand that oatmeal is a BREAKFAST FOOD, and belongs in a BOWL, it should not hold a shape!!!!!
   

   Quite honestly, this scares me more than those work out videos from the ’80s!!!

3. Spinach brownies, spinach and chocolate are not good combinations. They just aren’t. Trust me. Seriously, it’s just not a good idea. It really isn’t. Don’t debate me on this one. Just put away the spinach and no one gets hurt.

Thankfully, the recipe I bring to you today is beyond scrumdiddliuptious, super easy, and a worldwide favorite. So without further ado I give you…the chocolate chip cookie AND the chocolate chip cookie bar (It’s like one of those BOGO deals!!).

The Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour (½ white, ½ whole wheat works as well)

½ tsp. baking soda (for these cookies I don’t level the ½ tsp., I let it overflow a smidge)

½ tsp. salt

¾ cup unsalted butter, melted

1 cup brown sugar, PACKED (pack hard please, because the harder you pack the more brown-sugar-y deliciousness your cookies will contain)

½ cup white sugar

1 tbsp. +++ vanilla

1 egg

1 egg yolk

2 cups chocolate chips (my favorites are the Hershey’s Dark or the Ghirardelli 60% Cacao)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
2. Grease a cookie sheet or line with parchment paper or a silicon mat.
3. In a small bowl stir together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
4. In a large bowl stir together the melted butter, brown sugar, and white sugar.
5. Into the sugar/butter mixture beat in the vanilla, egg, and egg yolk. I just use a wooden spoon for this; it works just as well and makes less of a mess. Well, unless there happens to be a hole in your bag of flour and when you pick it up you suddenly have a very white kitchen. Not that this has happened before or anything, pshh, I can’t believe you assumed that!
6. Stir in the chocolate chips. Now, I don’t know about you, but 2 cups of chocolate chips NEVER make it into my cookies, for some mysterious reason I always seem to be a bit short. I have no idea why. It’s definitely not the three other people in my house who seem to have chocolate chip radar.

At this point you can choose to become metaphorical and corny or boring. Personally, I prefer being dramatic, but don’t feel bad if you prefer a mind-numbing, lackluster existence. Seriously, it’s no big deal.

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Now, close your eyes. Imagine yourself in Scotland. You are on a long and winding country road surrounded my rolling hills, pastures, and a whole bunch of sheep. The sheep are getting on your nerves; they are blocking your path!!! HOW DARE THEY!!! But anyways, once the sheep leave (probably because Jamie Oliver was making dinner) you find yourself at a three pronged fork in the road.

I sincerely hope that I never acually run into this in real life

Should you go left? Should you go right? Should you go straight? THIS IS SO STRESSFUL!!!

To the left you find yourself rolling cookie dough into 1” balls and baking for 12-15 minutes.

Straight ahead you see yourself turning off the oven and refrigerating the dough overnight (For some reason this has the most amazing effect on the cookies, they come out flat and super chewy.)

Don’t you just wish you could reach through the screen and grab one?!?!

To the right you see yourself patting the cookie dough into a ¼” thick rectangle (or square, or diamond, or trapezoid, the shape opportunities are endless) of cookie dough and baking for 30-40 minutes. Once the super large cookie has cooled, you cut it into bars.

Hungry yet?

Just remember, the best way to eat a chocolate chip cookie bar is with a nice tall glass of milk.

I’m sure you can see what a difficult decision lies ahead of you. All options are delicious. Now it is up to you. Choose wisely. Don’t do anything stupid. Putting raisins in chocolate chip cookies would be stupid.

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marley and Me

Singing for Strawberries

You know what I love? Well baking is a given, but other than that what I really love is rain. Crazy right? But one of my absolute favorite things to do is run up and down my driveway singing at the top of my lungs in the middle of a torrential downpour.

Guess what? It’s raining

So…even though you won’t notice the difference, I am going to go outside and run around in the rain, and when I come back I am going to tell you a story about strawberries.

I’M BACK!!! (And now officially soaking wet and extremely happy.) In case you were wondering (which I’m sure you were) I sang “Singing in the Rain” quite loudly and way off key. It was wonderful. My day has been made. I think I scared my neighbors. Oh well!

And now I do believe I promised you a story about strawberries?

It begins a long long time ago (those less dramatic may call it yesterday) with a pound of ripe red strawberries. Now these strawberries were somewhat magical. And there is only one recipe known to man that is worthy of such magic: Cheesecake Filled Strawberries. YUMMY! Your mouth is watering isn’t it? And so (enter dramatic cheesy music) I give you the super simple key to happiness (in the form of an AMAZING recipe).

The ingredients:

One pound of fresh ripe strawberries.

16 ounces cream cheese

1 ½ cups confectioners/10X sugar

2 tsp. vanilla

¾ cup cocoa powder

2 graham crackers, crushed (I normally use a plastic sword for this, completely unnecessary but super fun)

The instructions:

1. Cut the tops off of the strawberries, and then using a paring knife hollow out the strawberries. The space should fit a MINIMUM of a ¼ tsp. filling (otherwise the filling to fruit ratio is way off and the world could meet its untimely end, and that would be sad)
2. Beat the cream cheese, confectioners’ sugar, and vanilla together.
3. Put one half of the cream cheese concoction into a separate bowl and beat in the cocoa powder.
4. Fill either a pastry bag or a Ziploc bag with a corner cut off with vanilla cheesecake filling and a second bag with the chocolate cheesecake filling.
5. FILL THE STRAWBERRIES.
6. Top with crushed graham crackers.
7. Eat them and savor their amazingness.

My friend and I made ½ of the strawberries chocolate and the other ½ vanilla.

Okay wait, that recipe may be a bit of a lie. We ate about 1/3 of the strawberries before they even made it to step one :) oopsies

PICTURE TIME!!!

Chocolate Cheesecake Strawberry in A Fancy Little Glass

Yummy!

It was quite the strawberry fashion show

Strawberries Smile for the Camera

Can I Just Eat One Already???

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marley and Me

The Mad Hatter Cordially Invites You To Tea

I don’t know about you, but I’m not big on hot weather. Wait! I should clarify. I’m not big on heat when it does not involve me spending all day in the ocean jumping waves and building sandcastles. And sadly, I am nowhere near the ocean at the moment, and it is hot (very Very VEry VERy VERY hot-not that I’m exaggerating or anything ). Most logical people (a category into which I do not fall) would take the opportunity that a hot day provides to go to a pool, run through a sprinkler, or sit somewhere with air conditioning. But, me being me, I did nothing of the sort. Instead, I proceeded to stand in front of an oven that was preheating to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. And now you all know that I’m crazy (a fact you could have easily found out if you asked anyone who has ever had a conversation with me, I tend to be a bit uhhh enthusiastic).

There was, however, a point to this insanity. I was intent on making some bread. I wish I could explain why of all things to make, I absolutely needed to make bread, but as I cannot you will simply have to be satisfied that it was simply the mood I was in.

What type of bread was this you may ask? English Muffin Bread.

Some facts about English Muffin Bread:

1. It has English in the title (which I have assumed refers to England and not the USA). And all things from England are awesome (see list below).
2. It has the word muffin in the title.

   

3.    

3. It makes fabulous toast. And what does one put on toast? NOT VEGEMITE (unless you are from Australia, in which case it is acceptable). I, however, prefer jam on my toast. At the moment I am enjoying the strawberry jam that I made with my daddy a few weeks ago .

 

Reasons England is awesome:

1.  1. Harry Potter books 1-7
2. Ron Weasley
3. They have tea time!
   

   Tea Time with Mythbusters

4. They call vacation “holiday”
5. HAVE YOU HEARD THEIR ACCENTS???
6. The Beatles.
7. They still have knights (well, in a sense)
8. They just are, so accept it and move on.

Reasons England is not awesome:

1. They discovered a lot in chemistry. Do you know what science I took this year? Chemistry. Do you know what kept me up way too late this year? Chemistry. Do you know what probably killed a rainforest this year? My chemistry packets. Do you know what I will hold a grudge against for at least five more minutes? New York State for administering the chemistry regents. CHEMISTRY HAS DRIVEN ME TO THE BRINK OF INSANITY. Thankfully, next year I take physics, which I’m told is far more difficult. Wahoo.
2. Apparently Ron Weasley and his family are fictional characters, therefore his family does not exist and so now me and my red-headedness cannot join. I would like to ask for a moment of silence on this sad day.

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Thank you.

Anyhow, I just remembered the point of this blog is to give you recipes, not to listen to me ramble (it may be the fact that it is 11:30 p.m. and I had like three cups of black tea an hour ago, but I am feeling particularly delirious).

The Recipe: (dramatic music from Jaws…)

¼ cup cornmeal

6 cups all-purpose flour

5 tsp. dried yeast or 2 packages

¼ tsp. baking soda

2 cups milk (I used whole milk, but any kind will do swimmingly)

½ cup water (H₂O, composed of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom, a polar molecule that will only dissolver polar substances, it also has strong surface tension, and a boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius, bored yet?? Because I could go on! But I won’t. So you’re welcome.)

1 tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

Instructions:

1. Grease 2 8x4x2 loaf pans; sprinkle the cornmeal over the pans so that the sides and bottom are coated.
2. In a large bowl mix together the 3 cups flour, the yeast, and the baking soda.
3. In a medium saucepan heat the milk and salt until 120-130 degrees Fahrenheit (It is really important that the temperature is within that range. A temperature that is too low may not activate the yeast, and a temperature that is too high may kill the yeast).
4. Stir the milk mixture into the flour mixture.
5. Stir in remaining flour.
6. Place ½ of the dough in each loaf pan and sprinkle the tops with cornmeal.
7. Cover and let rise (preferably somewhere nice and toasty warm) for 45 minutes.
8. Bake at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 25-35 minutes.

And now that you have your ever so wonderful loaves of English Muffin Bread, I recommend eating it with either ricotta cheese and strawberry jam or a sunny side up egg on top! Happy breakfasting!

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marzipan

Making some strawberry jam

In the kitchen with my Dad

 

Hello My Name Is: Blogger, Baker, Jewelry Maker. Nice to meet you!

I came to the realization the other day that you have been reading my blog all about the things I bake, and yet you know very little about the baker. Shame on me. My goal today is to fix that small little problem, but you’ve been warned: this post is going to be extremely random.

Name: Marley

Nicknames: Marley and Me, Bob (after Bob Marley), Marz, and Marzipan

Birthday: April 10^th

Age: 15

Favorite Singers/Bands: These change frequently but at the moment they include Regina Spektor, Kate Nash, The Hush Sound, and Five for Fighting

Favorite Books: Harry Potter Series, Mortal Instruments/Immortal Devices Series, Graceling, Life as WE Know It, and anything by Agatha Christie

My Favorite Random Sayings:

Favorite Quotations: “Well behaved women seldom make history” –unknown

“–yet, sadly, accidental rudeness occurs alarmingly often. Best to say nothing at all, my dear man.” –Albus Dumbledore

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” – Albus Dumbledore

Random Pictures I Found On My Computer that I Really Love:

Most Random Thing on My Computer: A table that instructes you how to create a proper Shakespearean Insult

 

(Above) My dad, cousin, brother and I camping.

(Below) My friends and I

My friends and I on our way to my Sweet 16!

   

(Above) My parents, brother, and I.

Life Goal: To open a bakery and café in London or Boston where I will happily spend the rest of my life baking bread at four in the morning.

Live, laugh, love, bake,

Marzipan