Cinnamon Bread Recipe

Recipe courtesy of Pioneer Woman Cooks

1 cup Milk
6 Tablespoons Butter
2-½ teaspoons Active Dry Yeast
2 whole Eggs
⅓ cups Sugar
3-½ cups All-purpose Flour
1 teaspoon Salt
⅓ cups Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
Egg And Milk, Mixed Together, For Brushing
Softened Butter, For Smearing And Greasing
Preparation Instructions
Melt butter with milk. Heat until very warm, but don’t boil. Allow to cool until still warm to the touch, but not hot. Sprinkle yeast over the top, stir gently, and allow to sit for 10 minutes.
Combine flour and salt.
In the bowl of an electric mixer, mix sugar and eggs with the paddle attachment until combined. Pour in milk/butter/yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add half the flour and beat on medium speed until combined. Add the other half and beat until combined.
Switch to the dough hook attachment and beat/knead dough on medium speed for ten minutes. If dough is overly sticky, add 1/4 cup flour and beat again for 5 minutes.
Heat a metal or glass mixing bowl so it’s warm. Drizzle in a little canola oil, then toss the dough in the oil to coat. Cover bowl in plastic wrap and set it in a warm, hospitable place for at least 2 hours.
Turn dough out onto the work surface. Roll into a neat rectangle no wider than the loaf pan you’re going to use, and about 18 to 24 inches long. Smear with 2 tablespoons melted butter. Mix sugar and cinnamon together, then sprinkle evenly over the butter-smeared dough. Starting at the far end, roll dough toward you, keeping it tight and contained. Pinch seam to seal.
Smear loaf pan with softened butter. Place dough, seam down, in the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to rise for 2 hours.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Mix a little egg with milk, and smear over the top. Bake for 40 minutes on a middle/lower rack in the oven.
Remove from the pan and allow bread to cool. Slice and serve, or make cinnamon toast or French toast with it.
Yummy!

BREAD!

I will go to extraordinary lengths in order to make my cooking blog the the best it can possibly be. Working with dough has always been one of my downfalls in the culinary arena. Here I am a young senior, totally afraid of dough. Yeast is tricky, kneading requires way more skill than I seem to possess, and getting bread to rise a miracle power I'm apparently sadly lacking. And yet, I continue with longings to be the kind of cook who goes in and makes bread for her family every morning. Isn't that in the Proverbs 31 description of the perfect woman?

Keenly aware of my failings in the bread making/working with doughs departments, I spared no expense and had one of my readers flown all the way from New Haven Connecticut to my home here in San Diego. This young woman is co-author of her own highly rated cooking blog and known for her proficiencies with bread. My original plans were to fly both the em AND the am of Emandam in for this cooking venture but budget and other logistical complications arose. To be more specific, Am chose to spend the holiday season with her Beloved Carnivore. Whatever.

My kitchen has been filled with the aromas of baking bread since the day Em arrived. Working under her able tutelage, I've made vegan wheat bread and a very yummy cinnamon raisin bread. And all of it has tasted amazing. Even the vegan bread is completely edible to humans not possessed of a desire to ignore all food groups minus grass, nuts, and berries.

Fake Fried Chicken

I have a chicken recipe that is a staple in my home. One of the best compliments I ever received when serving this dish came when my Aunt Els couldn't believe it wasn't the traditional West Virginia fried chicken.

Ahh...fried chicken. The standard Sunday dinner of my childhood. I couldn't begin to count the number of times I've sat down to a plate of that fried chicken along with mashed potatoes, green beans, homemade rolls and some kind of wonderful dessert. Even writing these words bring back so many happy memories of times spent with my grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and close family friends. What a precious legacy of women who could cook and family who were eager to eat all that they made.

There's nothing special about this recipe - though Aunt Els has complained that she can't duplicate my result of crispy covering for the chicken. While I wouldn't label chicken cooked in butter as a health recipe, I do think it comes out less fat laden than the traditional West Virginia deep frying method.

My daughter recently traveled to Europe and brought back some Hungarian paprika. For any of you poor deluded souls who don't already know this fact, hungarian paprika is highly prized among cooks. The wanna-be culinary snob in me absolutely loves being able to add an international flavor to my ever-so-simple standard chicken recipe. Hillbilly meets exotic.

Normal people can buy a cut up chicken and bake the pieces in this easy coating. If you have or are cooking for someone with Stoops Picky Eater Syndrome, you'll have to buy only chicken legs, as that's the only part of the chicken acceptable for human consumption.

FAKE FRIED CHICKEN

1 T. margarine or butter ( you could possibly even use some kind of Pam coating - I've just never cared to try it this way)
2/3 cup bisquick
1- 1/2 t. paprika
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. pepper

Melt butter in pan. Mix Bisquick, paprika, salt and pepper in a plastic bag. Add chicken, a few pieces at a time. Shake to coat pieces, then place in the pan. Bake 425 for 35 minutes on 1 side. Turn chicken pieces. Bake another 30 minutes.

Sugar Cookie Recipe

1 cup sugar
1/3 cup shortening
6 T. butter or margarine, softened (I use unsweetened butter)
1 egg
1 T. milk
1 t. vanilla
2 cups all-purpose flour
1-1/2 t. baking powder
1/4 t. salt

Cream sugar, shortening and butter until fluffy. Add egg, milk and vanilla: beat well. Stir together the flour, baking powder, and salt; stir into creamed mixture. Cover and chill at least three hours. Working with half the dough at a time, on a lightly floured surface, roll to 1/8 inch thickness. Cut with cookie cutters into desired shapes. (Tim and Joy gave me a wonderful set of cookie cutters I love using from year to year. You'll have to find your own.) Place on an un-greased cookie sheet. Bake at 375 until set but not browned - about 8 minutes. Makes about 4 dozen cookies.

If you're going to frost or paint the cookies that step comes after they come out of the oven and cool. If you're cranking out massive amounts of cookies and want to forego the whole time consuming frosting step, put the colored sprinkles on before baking cookies.

The key to good sugar cookies is knowing when to take them out of the oven. Too soon and they wind up doughy, gooey, and somewhat unpalatable. Too long and you have cute, colorful rocks to eat. My technique is to bring them out of the oven the minute the edges have set, then leave them on the sheet for a minute or so more, allowing the hot cookie sheet to continue setting the cookies to perfection.

The History of My Sugar Cookies

Back when the world was new, I was a career woman, living on my own, working at the University of Arizona. I believe my work ethic was valued among my peers - you could give me a job and know that it would be done with all due haste and to the very best of my ability. Bosses loved me, co-workers sought my counsel, and most saw me as the go-to girl on the job.

Unless it was time for a potluck or other food related gathering. At this point in my life, I either ate out (courtesy of whatever guy I was dating at the time) or feasted on gourmet offerings such as Campbell's soups and frozen pot pies. Summing things up, let's just say I was no Emily. (And lest there be any misconceptions, let me also add there was a whole lot more of the soup and pot pies than dinners out with dates.)

I didn't even have to hope that the rolls/drinks/paper goods/plastic utensils slots would be available for big company food fests - my name would automatically be inserted into one of those no-brainer catagories on whatever list was being circulated through our third floor office. People knew me and they knew my skill set when it came to cooking.

EXCEPT FOR THE ANNUAL CHRISTMAS PARTY. The party to beat all parties when the stakes were high and the food mighty fine. For whatever long forgotten reason, I decided to make sugar cookies one year. And not just any sugar cookies. Mine were works of art, worthy of being framed and hung on the walls of some snooty art gallery that didn't exist in Tucson, Arizona during the mid to late seventies.

I used incredibly intricate cookie cutters with vast detailing inside. Santas, ornaments, angels, nutcrackers - and a whole host of others I can no longer remember. What a pain these were to work with! For each carefully delineated plastic line, I had to use just the right amount of light flouring to keep the cookie cutter from sticking into the dough while still pressing deep enough to create every fully carved out detail. And that was only the beginning of the tedious, time-consuming labor of love that went into these cookies!

Using an egg yolk paint and food coloring, I then carefully painted each cookie in dazzling full-color beauty. This step took up literally hours of my time, using a tiny watercolor brush. And, as if that wasn't enough work, once the cookies began baking, I had to take them out of the oven midway and touch up the places where expansion of the dough had created blank spots on my small doughy canvasses.

The end product was dazzling. Beautiful. Spectacular. Totally awe-inspriing when viewed ever so nicely arranged on a large cookie plate. People in the office would talk about these cookies for months ahead of time. By about mid-November I had co-workers sidling up to me in a spy vs. spy stealthy kind of way, asking if i'd make a batch just for them. Depending on how much I liked the petitioners, I'd grant these requests. This meant many, many nights slaving over a batch of elaborately painted cookies because heaven forbid I should give anyone something that wasn't absolutely perfect. (This was before I had kids and lost a lot of my neurotic compulsion to do everything faultlessly.)

Speaking of kids, that's when my Sugar Cookies as Art obsession ended. After Tim came along, I found a whole lot less time for things such as stamping out intricate cookies and then spending a gazillion hours painting and touching them up. Guess what i discovered - simple form cookie cutters were a swell idea! And colored sugar sprinkled liberally over the dough made cookies that tasted pretty darned good, even if they didn't look quite as professional. Bonus: even little children (my own) could help with sprinkles. (One of my readers will no doubt be able to recall a rather hilarious video we have of Tim on Sprinkle Duty. He was about 2 years old and having a bit of difficulty mastering the nuances of measured, even sprinkling.)

You know the oddest thing about the whole sugar cookie history lesson? I honestly think the original recipe I used for the Masterpiece Cookies wasn't even all that tasty! Or maybe it's just that substituting brushed egg yolk with lots of sugar sprinkles can't help but enhance the taste of the cookie. I'll take taste over artistic value any day of the week.

Gingerbread Men

2/3 cup shortening
1/2 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup light molasses
1 egg
3 cups flour
1 t. baking soda
1/2 t. baking powder
2 teaspoons ginger
1 t. cinnamon
1/4 t. ground cloves

Cream together shortening, sugar, molasses and egg. Sift dry ingredients together and add to creamed mixture. Stir well. Dough will be quite stiff.

Cover bowl and freeze for 20 minutes. (I don't do this. Instead, I leave the dough in the refrigerator for a few hours, or even overnight.)

Preheat oven to 375. Roll dough to 1/8 inch thickness . With cookie cutter, cut gingerbread kids. Add red hots for buttons.
(If you make the dough too thick your gingerbread boys will wind up looking all puffy, like they're suffering from some variation of PMS - Poorly Made Syndrome. No one wants a bloated gingerbread kid.)
BTW, I spent a few years finding the perfect gingerbread boy cookie cutter. Not too big, not too small, nicely rounded corners - it all matters.
Bake 8 to 10 minutes. Let cool and decorate. Of course, decorating is a personal preference. Vera did very little decorating on hers. I think they had mouths - and nothing else. Me? I could never stand to hand out naked, blind and hairless gingerbread people - but you might be different. My best friend told me about pictures she saw of beautifully filigreed designs on gingerbread kids. All white, lacy and totally elegant. I would admire that look greatly - but there's no way I'm going to spend my time creating artistic masterpieces on something with a ten second shelf life before being dunked in coffee and devoured.

If you wish, these cookies can also be made as ornaments. To do so, make a small knife cut in the top of each cookie before baking. When cookies are cool, put a ribbon through the hole and hang them on your tree or wherever else you dream of cookies dangling as art objects. I'm all about the eating of these cookies and not nearly so concerned with how they might create an artistic statement in my home.

Not that I can't be open to new suggestions! When my 91 year old father was here last Christmas he loved the cookie but hated the red hot buttons. Hey, if you only had two teeth, you might also find those three red lumps a little hard to swallow, in a very literal sense. For him, I modified the sacred formula and substituted frosting buttons.

Let Christmas Begin

I did not grow up in a home with lots of Christmas traditions. We were a pretty chaotic family with little attention toward things like stockings or advent calendars ...or much of anything else. If it hadn't been for three neighbor sisters (including the one who would go on to be my husband's fiance before I shamelessly broke them up and stole him away from her), we wouldn't have ever had the much anticipated thrill of Christmas baking. Every year those girls would cook up all manner of different kinds of cookies, and then layer them in a large shirt box as a gift for our family. There would be different kinds of goodies each year, along with some annual returnees. The ones I remember being particularly impressed with were the kind of sickly green spritz wreaths. I have no idea if they were tasty, I was just in awe of how someone could force cookie dough into those uniform bubbles of wreathdom.

Flash forward to me as a young mother. Of course, I wanted to create the magic of Christmas that every magazine heralded. The tree, the house decor, the food ...I wanted it all, for my children. But, without a history to call back on for ideas, it was hard to figure out exactly how to put meaning and tradition into the Christmas season. (Beyond the obvious meaning of the birth of our Savior, that is!) The stakes were high but I was clueless as to specifics of how to make holiday magic for my family.

My mother-in-law helped me figure out the whole stocking situation. I don't think I was an hour past conception before she began talking about the personalized stockings my children would require. Martin still had his and now his offspring would need their own to hang on the fireplace mantle, next to the stretching-to-infinity knit one belonging to Daddy. Putting her nimble fingers where her mouth was, Virginia immediately set about making a stocking for Tim, thereby setting a precedent that would be adhered to when Tim's brother and sister arrived. I loved the idea of my children having handmade stockings and I really loved taking so much care to fill those stockings with all manner of trinkets to delight the hearts of my babies.

So what does all this have to do with food and a recipe? Well, it's like this - about the time I was learning the importance of stockings hung by the chimney with care, I also watched as one of my friends made gingerbread boys for her family's Christmas celebration. Something about creating all those cheerful cookies every holiday season clearly appealed to the Christmas Creator in me. OK, there was the part about how Vera would come close to a nervous breakdown every year when it came time to crank out an army of happy Gingerbread people, but that was a detail I was able to completely overlook every time I saw the end product and imagined the yule time bliss those cookies had to have created for the lucky recipients.

I spent a few years experimenting with recipes and decorating until I came across the version I use to this day. Since that time, not a year has gone by without me stirring up huge batches of the dough to be made into my own army of gingery folk. There are people in my family who don't even like gingerbread ( have I mentioned I live with some picky eaters?) but, regardless of the mixed reviews, I can honestly say I absolutely love my gingerbread boys. I've made them happy, sad, emo, and with more anatomical features than one should have to look at on a gingerbread cookie. I've struggled with stiff icing that makes my hand hurt when I have to put on one hundred smiles, eyes, curls and little green outfits. Some years, when time is short and it seems like the decorating job will never end, I've had visions of my friend Vera - and suddenly understood her near nervous breakdown.

In the end, these gingerbread boys define Christmas for me. I anticipate the first one of the season in a way that's probably way more over-the-top than one should feel about a cookie to be quickly devoured along with hot tea. That first bite truly signals the beginning of a new Christmas season, in the same way that, many cookies and cups of tea later, the very last one left in the cookie jar means, beyond a doubt, that another holiday season has passed.