Aid in the Kitchen!

This summer I entered a competition held by Arla Ingman. They launched a new product which is a DIY Soft Ice Cream! (Vanilla, strawberry and chocolate flavour...nom!)

The idea was to try out this new product and take a pic of the outcome and send it to them and between all the participants Arla would raffle FIVE KitchenAid Artisan stand mixers!!!

I have been daydreaming of my very own KitchenAid stand mixer ever since I saw one in a cooking show on tv (the color was raspberry ice). So I decided to take up the challenge! It was a very warm summer here in Finland this year which was nice but it also meant that ice cream would melt super fast ∑(;°Д°) ! As I was trying to outsmart mother nature I made everything ready (made chocolate a butterfly and a dragonfly, picked raspberries and strawberries, put the jars in the freezer etc.) before starting to work with the ice cream itself. But it was SO warm! Here's the result of all my hard work (^___^)

Long story short! After some super awesome news this arrived:

It came with a ice cream maker bowl (on the left). I just cant wait to try it out! Gotta go buy me some DIY Soft Ice Cream! And there where some tasty recipes too - Gingerbread Ice Cream, I might try that one out this winter （￣ー￣）

I scream Ice Cream! LiLoPe

Cinnamon cinnabon

I saw a TV show called "Top Secret Recipe" where they tried to copy the recipe of the famous Cinnabons and as a result I got a major craving for those sweet sweet sweet cinnamon rolls! So of to the Internet in search of the best recipe of all time! And this is what I found The Perfect Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Recipe yumm! So good...

In total I got 17 sugary mind blowers (incl. the end pieces which are not so pretty but taste heavenly) of one batch of the dough.

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Dough

1 cup warm milk (I used whole milk)

2 eggs, room temperature

1/3 cup butter, melted

4 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup white sugar

1 package yeast (1/4 ounce) ( this is 7 g of dry yeast)

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Filling

1 cup brown sugar, packed

2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon

1/4 cup butter, softened

Spread for Cinnamon Roll Dough

1/4 cup butter, softened

Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Icing

3 oz cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup (4 tablespoons) butter, softened

1 1/2 cups confectioners’ sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/8 teaspoon salt

Warm the milk up to 42 C (so that the yeast will activate). Then, dissolve yeast in warm milk in a large bowl. Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs, and flour. Mix well. Dust your hands lightly with flour and then hand knead the cinnamon roll dough into a large ball.

Put the ball of dough into a bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap or linen cloth and let rise in a warm place for roughly 1 hour or until dough has doubled in size.

Once your dough has risen, it’s time to move on to the next step.  In a new, small bowl, combine brown sugar, cinnamon, and butter.  Mix them well.  Spray a flat surface with cooking spray or sprinkled flour.  Roll out your dough ball into a rectangle roughly 1/4 inches (0.6 cm) thick then spread a 1/4 cup of softened butter on the dough.  Next, sprinkle the rolled, buttered dough evenly with the sugar/cinnamon/butter mixture you prepared in your small bowl.

Roll up the dough starting with the longer side and cut into fourteen (14) cinnamon rolls (or smaller rolls, if you prefer). I cut about 1.6” (4 cm) long pieces. Place the cinnamon rolls in a lightly greased glass baking dish. Cover the dish with aluminum foil and let the cinnamon rolls rise until nearly doubled, which should take around 30 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C).  Once your cinnamon rolls have risen, bake them in the preheated oven until golden brown, approximately 18 to 20. The ones I put in a metal baking pan I baked about 17 minutes. The dough should still be soft, though fully cooked, especially toward the center of the rolls. But I think it’s best to make a test batch first since all ovens are a bit different.

As your cinnamon rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, butter, confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, and salt for the Cinnabon cinnamon roll icing.  The icing should be spread on your cinnamon rolls when they are still warm, shortly after being taken out of the oven so that the frosting melts into the cinnamon rolls.  This is reportedly part of the official Cinnabon process according to some of the employees.

Eat eat eat!!! 

Testing testing...

Drooooooool...

LiLoPe

Modified Kitty Litter Cake = FUN

We all know that the kitty litter cake is a über fun cake for halloween! But you can easily modify it for other occasions.

What you will need:

• a sponge cake
• a chocolate cake

• 1 package (200g) of cookies with chocolate chips
• OR
• 1 package (200g) of cookies with vanilla filling

• green food colouring (when making it in kitty litter style)
• 5dl vanilla sauce (I have used lactose free vanilla sauce available in Finland)
• 6-12 chocolate candy bars (I prefer these choco bars available in Finland)
• a kitty litter box (unused!!) or some kind of other container ^__^
• a pooper scooper (unused again :P ) or a little plastic shovel of some sort

You can use other recipes for the cakes but here are the ones I usually use:

Basic Sponge Cake

4 eggs

2 dl sugar

1 dl flour

1 dl potato flour

2 ts baking powder

Preheat the oven to 175 degrees Celsius. Grease the cake pan(diameter about 26 cm). Use a electric mixer to mix together eggs and sugar into a light foam. In a separate bowl combine the flour, potato flour and the baking powder. Mix the flour mixture carefully into the egg and sugar foam. Pour the batter in a greased cake pan. Bake in the lower part of the oven for 40 minutes.

Delicious Chocolate Cake

200 g dark chocolate (at least 44% cocoa)

200 g butter (unsalted)

200 g sugar

4 eggs

1 ts baking powder

1 dl flour

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Grease the cake pan (diameter 20-24 cm). Melt the chocolate and butter in a sauce pan over a low heat (stir stir and stir so the mixture wont burn). In a separate bowl use an electric mixer to mix the eggs and sugar into a thick light foam. Use one more bowl to mix the flour and baking powder. Combine the egg and sugar foam with the flours stir it gently. Add the melted (and cooled) chocolate and butter mixture and keep mixing it gently. Pour the batter in a greased cake pan . Bake for 15 minutes. If you want the cake to be a mud cake bake only for 10 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling crush the cookies (choco chip or vanilla filling). Add few drops of green food colouring in the crushed cookies and mix. After the cakes have cooled take a large bowl and crumble the cakes in the bowl. Add the vanilla sauce in the cake mixture. Take about 1/3 of the cookie crumbs and add them in the cake and vanilla sauce mixture. Put the cake "mush" in the kitty litter box. Put half of the chocolate bars in a microwave safe dish and heat until softened. Bury the soft bars randomly in the cake and sprinkle the cake with the remaining cookie crumbs. (Kitty version) Heat the rest of the choco bars and modify the shape of the bars -> poo style! Place on top of the cake :D 

If you are able to restrain yourself the cake will taste awesome after spending one night in the refrigerator!

Here is the kitty litter style cake (couldn't find a pic of the one I made but here's one from Brookage) 

Here's the version I made for my husbands 30th B-day with a little drum kit on top. I didn't use the green food colouring here.

I've also made this so that there was a little pink tractor on it :) Only your imagination is the limit!

Have fun times baking!

                                                                                           ♥LiLoPe

Macaron Marathon!

I made these macarons for my friends at work on my last day :)

Pink -  white vanilla filling

Green -  pink strawberry filling

White - brown mint chocolate filling

Yummmm!

Thank goodness my sis came to help me with the filling (there were sooo many!)

I also made some extra special ones with ♥ for my darling hubby :)

I used the macaron recipe which I have used before :) The fillings were cream cheese with vanilla extract, cream cheese with strawberry sugar and for the brown one I used Betty Crocker - Rich and Creamy Icing Chocolate Fudge - and added some mint extract in it.

♥LiLoPe

What have I been up to ^__^

Loong time no posting! So much has been going on with my studies, life...etc. I have been doing some art studies during this school year and it has been great. The only con is that the teaching takes part over 300 km (over186 miles!) away from where I live...soo much driving. But it has been worth it! Here are some pics from one of the courses where we made a plaster head :)

We all got a 10 kg lump of clay each. There was a model in the middle of the classroom and we tried to capture her facial features (with the hair we were allowed to use our own intuition)

Here I'm preparing the clay head for the mold making process (making a seam) you see a mold that is drying in the background (white alien eggy thing) 

Here the is the mold in making (clay head inside)

Opening the mold. This was very exiting!!! The mold opened up into three pieces.

Here the mold pieces have been first brushed with an emulsion and the filled with plaster and some sackcloth. After this the mold pieces were put together and we let them dry over night.

Chisel in action! Discovering the plaster head from the plaster mold (for me it was very hard to see where the mold ended and the head begun...I chipped of a bit too much here and there...-_-')

And here is the final plaster head :) During the process the clay head and the plaster mold were destroyed (so sad :(....)

LiLoPe