Category: Blog Posts

Cinnamon Scrolls

This week’s experiment was Cinnamon Scrolls. I looked up recipes and the first four were all the same. I liked the explanation from Fun, Cheap or Free the best. Now, you can’t believe everything you read on the internet, because one site said this recipe takes 45 mins to make. It took me more like 3 hours. Most of that was waiting for my bread machine to do it’s thing, but I’m glad I started these early!

First off, I added everything to the bread machine (after a early morning walk to the ahops for some milk) and waited for 1.5 hours while it kneeded the dough and allowed it to rise. The dough then needed to be rolled out into a rectangle. I don’t have a rolling pin, so I improvised (See the jar at the top of the pic? Yeah. That.). I smooshed margerine all over it with my fingers, as Fun, Cheap or Free suggests, which was totally fun but the end result was…messy.

Sprinkle the cinnamon and brown sugar mix over with a sieve and roll the dough! I cut each roll to be about 2cm wide…tall?…long? Anyway I got a lovely even 21 scrolls out of this recipe! I let them sit in a warm oven for about 15 minutes (I couldn’t wait the suggested 30 minutes. I wanted my scrolls!). They cooked for about 20 minutes, but didn’t brown. To check if they were cooked, I cut into one of them. Is there a better way? I’ve never made dough things before! Besides pizza. Mmmm… pizza…

Where the magic happens. This is all the bench space I have…
The rolls I cut are on the left and my “rolling pin” is in the middle.

While the scrolls were cooking, I mixed about four fifths of a philly cheese block, one cup of icing mix and a glob of butter together to make the delicious icing. The icing had a slightly tart taste using this ratio, which I thought offset the sweetness of the sugar piled into the scrolls.

After proving in the oven, but prior to baking. The ones in the round container were in for the longest and at the warmest temp.

They’re best served warm, either straight out of the oven or microwaved for 20 seconds, as I discovered the next day ;). Probably some icecream would be amazing, but I haven’t tried that…yet. I was too busy eating them to take a pic of the final product 😛

Bake on,

Beth x

Zucchini Brownies…Balls

This experiment started when I had 3 zucchinis sitting in my (very small) fridge. They needed using, but I don’t like zucchini by istelf (it WAS destined to go into pasta sauce, until I ran out of time and tomatoes). Cue the Pinterest search! There were heaps ideas, but I was intrigued by the Zucchini Bownies from iFoodreal. Now, I don’t really follow recipes for 2 reasons.

  1. Boring!
  2. I want to try and make things healthier
  3. I often don’t have all the ingredients

Ok that was 3. Oops. Anyway, I was very clever and subbed maple syrup/honey with brown sugar. I treated it as a 1:1 ratio, when a quick google shows that it should be a 3:4 ratio. I didn’t put in enough sugar. The result was a cake which tasted like cocoa and flour. Ugh. It needed sweetening.

I pondered for a day and decided to turn the brownies into cake pops. So I broke the brownie squares up into crumbs, made some buttercream icing and mixed! I rolled them into balls and froze them (too impatient to wait for them to set in the fridge). Already the brownies were way better, with the sweetness needed provided by the icing. But why stop there? Time to coat them in white chocolate.

Now, I have always loved chocolate and using chocolate in cooking, but I’ve never successfully tempered chocolate. I’ve looked into it (as a scientist I understand the importance of research) and finially decided to try it. Melt half the chocolate in the micro and then add the unmelted choc buds. Hold your breath, coat the zucchini balls and back in the freezer.

The moment of truth. Did they work? I used a fork to break into the hard, chocolate shell, with a beautiful snap. I tempered the chocolate! Oh right, this was about the zucchini brownies. They were quite nice. I’ve never had cake pops before so I wasn’t expecting the grainy texture, but I think that’s normal? But they tasted much, much better and my partner even ate them! I only told him afterwards about the zucchini 😉

Bake on,

Beth x