I've found a go to bun recipe over the last few months since the baby has been born. A mix of my old favorite over night bun recipe I got from a blog, (I'm sorry I don't remember) and a newer bun recipe that I found last Thanksgiving for quick fast rising buns. Even people that find yeast to be a thing of great confusion, I believe, can do these buns. 

There is one thing that I think you should know about me though. Baking for me, is much like when I'm doing anything else, I try to find a way to make it my own. I can't just let the dough be. There MUST be something in it. I must do something with it that can be either ordinary or new (at least for me). So, I will give you my recipe and list a few things that I do with it that have been a hit. And will list more in the future to also give you ideas. 

Quick roll recipe

Makes 12 buns

-Starter- 

1 stick of butter

1 cup of luke warm water

1/2 cup of white sugar

2 tsp of yeast

- Dough-

1 large egg

3 1/2 cups of flour, and 1/2 to 1 cup more for kneading

Firstly, preheat oven to 375F. Then melt butter and mix with luke warm water and sugar in large bowl. Stir in 2 tsp of yeast and let it sit on your counter undisturbed for 15 minutes.

There should be a bubbly mixture in your bowl when you go back to check on it. 

Add 1 egg and 1 cup of flour in and mix with fork. Continue to add in flour until 3 1/2 cups is worked into the dough. 

Sprinkle out some flour onto your work surface and place the dough on it. Knead for 3-5 minutes, sprinkling flour on, and working in as needed. Viola! It is o.k. if the dough is still sticky at this point! Yes, your hands and counter top will get dirty, but lets face it. We'd all rather have moist dough than dry dough right?

Take your dough and split it until you have 12 blobs and make those suckers into balls by rolling them around in your hands. Place them on a cookie sheet or in a pan if you want them squared and let sit on top of the stove for 10-30 minutes until puffed. We don't want them double the sized, we want them just a little more puffy than they were. 

Stick them in your 375F oven and bake 10-15 minutes. Take them out when you see the golden tops. And lather some butter on top of those suckers.

I'm going to go ahead and stick in the baby and my favorite way to stuff these buns. I really don't have a name for them but I can tell you, come the end of the day, they are gone. Hand her a bun and don't you dare  try to take it off of her. 

When you split the dough into 12 portions, flatten them out by pressing your palm into them until they are a small disk. Then in a bowl mix 1 softened cream cheese, 1 cup of pizza cheese shredded, and as much bacon as desired (I use about 6-7 pieces chopped). Portion these out onto your dough and close up and turn over. Bake for 12 minutes and they come out like the picture below. And don't forget to give those buns a lather of butter on top. 

If you aren't going to eat these buns right away my suggestion is to bag them after ten minutes only. Yes, only ten minutes. Close that bag up and let the steam soften them into little dreamy bites of goodness. And refrigerate after a half an hour. You can freeze them even. Just thaw them and warm them up in the microwave when needed.

Hope you're having a lovely fall day!

- Bunny

Homemade food and the why

These and more are all the things I've been making and we love so dearly. I'll be sharing the recipes to them all with you and telling you where I've found them and how I've tweaked them. But I'd like to share something with you first for today's post.

Since having baby bear I have had stomach issues. It's taken a long time to get down what it was and allot of evaluating. But it's plain and simple. I have a problem with preservatives. Just one bite or teaspoon can ruin hours of my day. And I'm not doing a sob song that I've tried but I want to be healthy... nope. I mean, I want to live a good life and not be overweight, but I love love love love love food!! I love all types of food. But as I write this I am finally almost done being sick from a preservative that I ate today.

I sat for about a half an hour and was plain confused on why I hurt so bad, why my insides felt like I was bloated and twisted into a pretzel. Everything I had eaten was homemade. I had homemade banana bread with a good brand of butter for breakfast. For lunch, I had a ham and cheese sandwich on bread that I made myself and had mixed the ham and cheese into the dough. But my failure was the condiment. I had dipped my two sandwiches into a small tablespoon sized amount of mayonnaise.

That tiny little amount of that yummy condiment made my life miserable for hours till my body chilled out four hours later.

I had no idea before this happened, how common preservatives are, and which foods have more than others. And I'm not saying that I put allot of research into it. I just looked at the things that we normally eat and was certainly shocked.

So that, in turn is why I make homemade, some nights staying up till my mother in the Netherlands is awake in the morning. Two nights ago she may or may not have asked me if I had fallen asleep at the oven. lol. The good about this whole thing is that we get to experiment and I can't settle for being bored and getting a boxed meal. I have to actually think and create. Which has made some really awesome things come together... and certainly some very... strange ones I'll never admit to trying.

Look tomorrow for my recipe for overnight refrigerator bread. And have an amazing day.

Whoops!

I feel like allot of things in allot of peoples lives are mistakes. My father always used to look at me when we were alone and ask me if I was happy. And I am.

A new friend asked me a week ago if my job was blogging since I had said once previously to her that I worked online. I replied that I did work online doing something and used to blog, but had not blogged in some time. Since I have last wrote on here, we have had an addition to the family by the name of Amelia Gray aka baby bear, we have also added a few cities to the have traveled list, and have baked/ cooked some new (to me) really awesome things.

Lets start this blog back out with something new I have started making and is a house favorite. Definitely something for the chocoholics, because I literally eat one, and I love chocolate more than my cat. - Ok, almost more than my cat. - I don't know what to call them, I picked up the recipe from a vlogger that we follow on YouTube. So, In turn we in the house call them Zoella cookies.

This is the vlog where she makes them and invites over the family we also subscribe to.

Recipe makes 8-10 hand sized cookies. * There is a reason they are so big, when you make them and wait the 30 minutes before removing them from the pan and eating one, you find out why. * And in my chocoholic opinion, one is enough for one person. And two is enough for one person if you are alone, and have milk and a book and just want some darn good chocolate and you're cranky.

1 egg
1 1/4 cups sugar
1 package chocolate morsels
2 1/5 cups of self rising flour
14 tablespoons of butter (yes you read that right)
2/3 cup of baking cocoa powder
1 dash of milk

- here are my notes - I don't keep self rising flour so I used regular and added in two tsp of baking powder. I know that the recipe for self rising flour calls for salt also, but I don't see the reason for this because baking powder has a salty taste to it. I also don't believe in using salt free butter, so I used salted in this recipe and every recipe from here on. And lastly, Zoella uses milk chocolate and white chocolate chunks. We have used milk & dark chocolate, just milk chocolate, and peanut butter chips & milk chocolate. I'm just not a fan of white chocolate. Though someday I will give in and try it, and I may just find myself pleasantly surprised.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F
Mix butter and sugar in one bowl, add in egg and mix till fully incorporated.
In another bowl mix flour (also baking powder if you don't have or don't use self rising), and cocoa powder in another.
Mix both together and add in a dash of milk, add in chocolate (I do this with my hands, it will break a weak or small wooden spoon) and form balls the size of your palm.
Take cookie sheet with parchment paper, put dough on it and press slightly down. Place an inch to inch and a half apart.

Cook for 10-11 minutes. NOW LISTEN, sorry for yelling, take these cookies and WAIT a half an hour before MOVING or EATING them. I'm so sorry, but seriously, you want to wait. It's magical. And we won't even go there on how hard it is for a pms'ing woman and a six year old to wait a half an hour when there is fresh chocolate cookies on the counter.

I really hope you enjoy them, and the post. And hey... it's nice seeing you. :)