Archives for April 2011

cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread

Welcome to my cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread adventure.

Advisory: There is a lot of sugar in this masterpiece.

A LOT.

But naturally, that’s what makes it so delicious. Mmmmm.

I found this recipe from my ultimate fave: Joy the Baker. THANKS, Joy! You totally rock.

Alright! Let’s start with our team:

You’re going to need flour, sugar, active dry yeast, salt, butter, milk, water, eggs, and vanilla for the dough. And then for the tasty sugary filling you’ll need a little more sugar (or who are we kidding, a LOT), ground cinnamon, ground nutmeg, and melted butter.

First, I had to mix all the dry ingredients for the dough together. I whisked them up real good till it was all nice and fluffy.

On a side note: Just throw the packet of active dry yeast in without following the directions on the packet. I was a little confused here, because I make another bread where you need to add water and sugar to the yeast packet to “activate” the dry yeast, but after reading Joy’s directions several times I figured out that this need not be done for this recipe. Just throw the yeast in the bowl with all the other dry ingredients and call that part of the adventure a day.

Next I made a buttery, vanilla-y, milk mixture by melting 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter in a 1/3 cup of whole milk. After the butter and milk are good and blended I added 1/4 cup of water and a teaspoon of vanilla. Mmm I love vanilla.

After this, I added the dry ingredients with the eggs and the buttery, vanilla-y, milk mixture and stirred and stirred and stirred with a spatula until the dough was good and sticky. Joy says sticky is good.

Mine looked something like this:

Then I placed a clean towel over the bowl and then patiently waited for the dough to rise. This took about 1 hour. It was hard for me to wait, but I willed myself to do it.

While I was waiting ever so patiently I made the cinnamon sugar fulling and melted another 2 tablespoons of butter until it was semi-brown. I probably could have browned it even more than I did, but since I’d never browned butter before I was scared and didn’t want it to burn. Maybe burned is what Joy meant, but I don’t like burned tastes so I took precautions on this step.

There is my risen dough. Looks terrific if I do say so myself.

I rolled the dough out as shown and slathered on the melted butter and hefty sugar filling. It was an insane amount of sugar, but what Joy says, I do. Sugar, sugar, heaven. Then I sliced the dough into six equal-ish pieces, stacked them on top of each other and sliced the pile six more times.

From here I loaded the squares into a buttered and flowered loaf pan.

And just for the heck of it, I sprinkled on some extra sugar that tried to get away.

So. much. SUGAR.

And oh so worth it.

After this I had to let the dough rise in the bread pan for 40 or so more minutes. Then FINALLY (I know!) I baked it up. 30-35 minutes at 350 degrees and I had myself a masterpiece:

Tasty, tasty. This bread is amazing.

SOOOOO good!! It certainly wasn’t quick, but it’s worth it.

For a more detailed recipe and more delicious pictures of the cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread, visit Joy the Baker. She’s witty, and totally cool, and makes lots and lots of delicious treats to eat. Make something from her blog and you can thank me later. She never disappoints.

C+P house tour

Remember when I went to Tampa and felt the warm breeze of 85 degrees?

Yeah, so do I. When it snowed last Friday I almost cried.

It’s crazy to think I was there just a week ago flying in the clouds and drinking margaritas. Ahhh the sweet life.

The sweet, sweet life of a Floridian.

Aaaaanyways. Back to reality and the typical North Eastern “spring”, this weekend was definitely gorgeous in my appreciative eyes cause I’ll basically take any sunshine I can get.

Really though, the point of this post is not about the weather, it’s about my friend’s new house in the sunshine state (what a lucky name for a state)! I LOVE sunshine. Love, love love. Love love. LOVE.

This is Caroline and Pete’s ADOREable new house. Cal did some incredible decorating that I LOVE. She lives in Florida, which may make you think of pastels and Lily Pullitzer (nothing wrong with that of course), but has made her house her own style and it’s absolutely perfect.  Shall we take a look inside?

I love the living room. It’s got a sophisticated beach style and the pink accents are so pretty.

Caroline loves to cook so she spends a lot of time in the kitchen. I loved cooking with her while I was there because she’s such a pro at it!

The master bedroom is gorgeous! I love the bedspread (from One Kings Lane) and her ginormously awesome dresser is from IKEA. LOVE! The “love birds” were the cake toppers on their wedding cake. Adorable.

The home office is my favorite room in the house. I think the bookshelves surrounding the room are so cool. I also love the old chair and cow skin rug. SUCH a fun room.

HI Penny!

The house is beautiful. GREAT work, friend. I just love it.

a week of instagr.am

oh instagr.am how i love thee… let me count the ways.

taking the train. cinnamon and sugar pull-apart bread. spring bedding. chick-fil-a. walks around brookline.

hope you had a nice sunny weekend!

cute cute cute

Now that I have an iPhone I can’t help but check out all the fun cases available for them. I’ve been to the Apple Store a few times in the past few weeks eyeing all the fun Kate Spade products. They’re all so adorable it’s impossible to choose!

I love the paintings. SO pretty.

The polka dot one is super fun too. The backing is hot pink on this one!

While I was browsing the store today I came across this awesome MacBook case by Marc Jacobs. I totally need this. I LOVE it. I love the colors and the silky fabric, plus the inside is a fuzzy bright yellow. Amazing. I know my birthday is 5 months away, but this is on my wish list for sure.

Perfectly perfect. Yes indeed.