Isabo's Cinnamon Rolls from the "Double S Ranch"and Book Giveaway!

CONGRATULATIONS TO LAST WEEK'S WINNERS, 

Nancy Connally and Connie Saunders!  Two more winners this week for a copy of "Back in the Saddle"!

There is nothing like the smell of fresh, homemade, yeasty cinnamon rolls, is there? And after volunteering at a Seattle mission, Isabo Castiglione isn't afraid to cook for a crowd, and take care of food-loving cowboys and the irascible-but-growing-more-lovable Sam Stafford, owner of the famous Double S Ranch in the Kittitas Valley of Central Washington.


My bread recipe courtesy of Betty Crocker Cookbook....

2 packets of yeast (I use 2 Tablespoons from my big pack of yeast)
3/4 cup very warm water
Mix those two things together, a marriage made in heaven!!!

Then add:

1/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon salt
3 Tablespoons Crisco (shortening)
2 2/3 cup very warm water
5 cups flour


3-4 cups flour (added during kneading step)

Mix yeast and 3/4 cup water, let sit a couple of minutes to "work"... then add sugar. salt, Crisco and 5 cups bread flour.... Mix slowly at first, then raise the speed and mix well with regular beater paddle until smooth on medium speed.

Add 3-4 more cups of flour one cup at a time. I find it's usually about 8 1/2 cups altogether for a batch that makes a ton of cinnamon rolls or two nice big 9" loaves of bread. Use dough hook (kneader) to work flour into dough while you chill-lax and do your nails or something. Really, it is pretty darn easy with today's machinery.

Turn out dough onto counter. It's always good if the counter's clean. That is not a necessity, however.

Grease mixing bowl thoroughly. Put somewhat tainted dough back into mixing bowl. Flip it over or grease the top of dough, cover with towel and let rise in warm spot until almost doubled in size. (Depending on temperature this might be half-hour or an hour....)

Punch dough. (Removes latent aggressions)

Divide in half. (Permanent separation, SO SAD!!!!!)   ;)

How cute is my helper????? LOVE YOU, LOGAN!!!!

We rolled that dough out just like you see here, and then slathered it with butter...

And for this batch we then liberally sprinkled with brown sugar, and then topped with cinnamon.

Roll out one half into large rectangle about 12 x 20 inches, give or take. No need to flour table or counter, bread dough is very elastic and won't stick like pie crust.

Butter dough thoroughly by plopping butter here and there and then spreading it.  Sprinkle with about a ton of brown sugar. Then sprinkle with about 2 Tablespoons cinnamon. (I really don't measure this I just liberally sprinkle sugar and cinnamon like crazy because there's no such thing as too much of either, is there?)

Roll up dough starting from narrower end and rolling tightly....  Slice off uneven ends and then slice the cinnamon roll with a good, serrated bread knife at about 1" (one-inch) increments.

(This is where I got busy with kids and photo-op ended abruptly!!!)

When the roll is fully sliced, prepare a 9 X 13" pan by melting a stick of butter into the pan. (I just popped it into the oven until it was melted....)

Sprinkle butter liberally with BROWN sugar.....  Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.

Place cinnamon rolls into pan, 3 across and 4 rows....

Allow to sit (proof) for about ten minutes.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 11-13 minutes, until just golden brown.

Turn out onto a large platter or cookie sheet, flipping pan upside down and letting all that gooey wonderful goodness just DRIP down the rolls....

Now here's the best part.... drizzle cream cheese icing over rolls while warm.

Cream Cheese Icing

4 oz (1/2 an 8 oz. block) cream cheese (do not use that pretend neufchatel stuff. I will haunt you.)
4 oz butter (do not skimp and use margarine. I mean, really??????)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-4 cups confectioners/powdered/10X sugar

Soften cream cheese and butter, mix well with vanilla. Add powdered sugar slowly to avoid a HUGE mess and then beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes... You want the frosting smooth... and fairly thick. If it's thin add a little more sugar.

Do not add milk or water. Please. Trust me, it's awesome this way!!!  Drizzle on cinnamon rolls. (I often make this and pop it into a freezer zip-lock bag when I have cream cheese that's sitting, opened in the fridge. It molds quickly so if no one is around to eat it making frosting with it is a great time saver when I need a quick frosting out of the freezer. Frostings are delicate, though, and they take on the scent and flavor of things around them, even in the freezer, so use it up fairly quickly. Not like the liver you've had in there since last December because it was on sale and you couldn't resist. )  :)

Eat warm or cool but there's usually never any around to get cool, and can you imagine a hard-working group of Central Washington cowboys... and hungry kids... coming inside and not jumping into something this amazing?

This is home-sweet-home, right in your hand.

And today we've got two more copies of "Back in the Saddle" to give away! "WIN IT BEFORE YOU CAN BUY IT"!  Leave me a comment and a way to get your e-mail... or friend me on facebook and I'll message you there!

Multi-published, bestselling author Ruth Logan Herne loves to write the kind of stories she loves to read... and cowboys rank high on the list. You can e-mail her at loganherne@gmail.com, visit her website or friend her on facebook where she loves to chat and play and pray with people! 

Easy Cinnamon Rolls!

Missy Tippens, The Belle, here. Sharing simple cinnamon rolls that even I could make! :)

Okay, here's where I admit that though I'm never too worried about being the perfect hostess,  on occasion I do worry a little about keeping up with the Jones's. Especially when my daughter comes home from sleepovers talking about what her friends' moms have cooked for breakfast, and how GOOD it was. So, yes, I get a little…convicted competitive inspired.

;)

So, when my daughter invited her friends over for an after-Christmas party and sleepover, I made up my mind to cook homemade cinnamon rolls. And of course, for me, that meant finding a really easy recipe. Using store-bought dough! I found it in the freezer section. It came in a bag with three loaves. I thawed it out by putting the bag in the refrigerator the day before.

Easy Mini-Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredients:
Frozen bread dough--3 loaves
butter, melted
sugar
cinnamon

Icing:
Powdered sugar
strongly brewed coffee
maple syrup (optional)

Roll out each of the balls of thawed dough on a floured surface. This dough was so elastic I had to wrestle it all around the kitchen! It wore me out. Literally had shoulder and neck and hand pain by the time I finished. Every time I'd get it to spread a little, it would draw back up. Thus, the very small rectangle and tiny rolls! :) (If anyone knows what to do about dough that's too tight, please let me know! I envisioned throwing it up like a pizza maker but didn't actually try that.) :)

Anyway, get each of your dough balls rolled out into a rectangle. Spread on melted butter. Then sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon.

Then roll the dough, starting with the long side.

Slice the roll. (Since my roll was so skinny, I sliced the rolls about an inch wide.) Then place each roll into a greased pan, touching. (You can see it in the background of the photos above.)

Bake 375 degrees for about 12-15 minutes. You may want to start checking earlier if they're as tiny as mine!

While baking, make the icing.

I always make icing by trial and error. I started with about a half a box of powdered sugar. Then added a little coffee and syrup until the consistency was good.

Remove rolls from the oven and drizzle with the icing. I always eat them warm! Enjoy! I'm sorry I don't have a photo to share. I was busy rounding up the sleeping gals.

By the way, my daughter was shocked impressed when I woke them telling them I'd made homemade cinnamon rolls. (Semi-homemade, but who's going to tell on me???)  HA! :)

And another big BY THE WAY!

My new book from Love Inspired is up for pre-order!

Amazon
B&N
CBD

Comfort food: Cinnamon rolls with Ruthy's frosting and chai tea.

Hello, everybody! It's the Fresh Pioneer here this weekend. But you knew that, right? You knew that because the post is LATE. And it has sugar and wheat and all sorts of unhealthy things. So, buckle up because I'm gonna feed you some tasty comfort foods whether you wanted Julie's GAL cooking or not! (Seriously, you can just watch us eat the rolls. No harm in that and more for ME.)

I know we've done cinnamon rolls here before but when I looked at the posts, there weren't ever any pics of the finished product. So, let's see if we can get all the way through the recipe, all the way to the sweet, sweet end!

 1 qt milk
1 cup vegetable oil
1 cup sugar
Heat in a pan but don't boil.

 Dry ingredients:
9 cups flour
1tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 TBS salt

When the milk has warmed, but not boiled, wait for it to cool a bit and then add 4.5 tsp yeast. Let it settle in and get all happy.
After ten min or so, add to the dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

 Cover with a damp cloth and put somewhere warm. I put it on Miss Betsy, our vintage picnic hamper. She holds crayons and pens and glue and glue sticks. She's quite the crafty gal and misses being part of the food preparation.

 After an hour or so, turn on the oven at 375F. Now cut the risen dough into two pieces. Roll one out into a square, smear with half a cube of softened butter. (You read that right.) Sprinkle with sugar.

 Add cinnamon (missed that picture!!), roll it up, cut into pieces...

 Place in a buttered dish.

 Make sure you have very small, chubby hands for extra cuteness.

 Take the second bit and decide it looks like a fat bottom and slap, slap, slap it, laughing hysterically all the while.

Pour melted butter (a few tbs) onto the rolls and let them sit for ten minutes on the warm stove.

 While it's cooking, let's use Mr. Latte maker do make some chai tea. Some of us (read: ALL OF US) have a terrible cold and need something more than a vanilla latte.

 Three bags in the top, add the water.

 Add milk, press the button. (Isn't this fascinating? It gets better!)

 *WHIRRRRRRRRR*

 Oh, some of us are on a deadline and have darling, lovely, adorable friends down in Southern states who decided to send us REAL Cafe Du Monde coffee. I should make some beignets...

Sugar at the ready.

 So, added a bit of sugar, pour in the chai tea, a sprinkle of cinnamon on top...

 Waiting.... waiting.... waiting....

 Oh, that's the problem. Someone has been watching the oven. SHOO!

 Sideways!! Horrors!

 OK, using Ruthy's frosting from Nov 2012 (see, I DO read this blog!) I made frosting:
4 oz cream cheese
4 oz butter
4-5 cups powdered sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp vanilla

Soften the cream cheese and butter, blend with the other ingredients. It worked!

 First bite... Kids are watching...

Altogether now, YUMMY. Sit yourselves down and have a warm cinnamon roll and some chai. We're all about the comfort here. 

Hoping all of you are staying warm and cozy. Praying that you've got a warm blanket, a good book, and wonderful friends (like the kind that send you coffee).

Monkey Bread to the Max from Guest Blogger, Carrie Drexler

Hi Everyone!

Carrie and her youngest brother.
Isn't he every girl's dream?

It's Carrie again, filling in for my mom. 

 The problem with having two bakers in the house is that sometimes we want to use the same pan. This happened yesterday morning; I wanted to make this simple monkey bread recipe, and my mom was going to make a sour cream blueberry cake (I think she's still going to make it, check back next week). Both recipes used the bundt pan, but since mine meant getting gooey maple, brown sugar monkey bread for breakfast before church, I won out.

I would not consider myself a Pinterest addict, but there are some great recipes to be found through that site. This was a recipe that's been pinned on my Pinterest board since I joined the site a couple years ago and I've never found the time to buckle down and make it. It was super simple and looks amazing.

First, preheat the oven to 375, and grease your bundt pan.

Then gather up your ingredients!

1 ½ Cans Pillsbury Grands Biscuits

3 TBSP Butter (melted)

½ C. Pancake Syrup

1/3 C. Packed Brown Sugar

½ tsp. Cinnamon

¼ C. Pecans (Optional)

I forgot to clean up behind my ingredients. Don't worry, you can leave out the cat treats and Ritz crackers.

Mix together melted butter and syrup. In another bowl mix together brown sugar, cinnamon and nuts (if using, I left them out).

Pour half the syrup in the bottom of the pan and sprinkle half of the brown sugar mixture over the top.

Layer your biscuits on top of that in a circle. The great part about this is that you can use fewer/more biscuits depending on the number of people (you'll just have to watch the bake time).

Pour the rest of the syrup over the top and sprinkle the rest of the brown sugar. It already looks delicious!

Bake at 375 for 25-30minutes, or until biscuits are golden brown on top.

Look at that gooey maple goodness. They were definitely delicious and super easy. This is a Sunday morning keeper for sure.

I celebrated my birthday at the beginning of the month and since then came across this picture from my second birthday. As you can see, a love for baked goods was instilled at a very early age.

Carrie's 2nd Birthday 

Thank you, Carrie, for sharing your recipe. And yes, it was delicious! And as promised, next week we'll have a Blueberry Sour Cream Cake recipe straight from southwest Michigan.

And what Monday would be complete without a gratuitous puppy picture?

Thatcher heard that puppy kindergarten starts this evening...does it look like he's ready for it?

Ruthy/Dorothy Cinnamon Rolls Revisited!

Okay, I did the unthinkable....

DO NOT TELL CONNEALY.

Just don't, 'kay?

Because I messed with the cinnamon roll recipe which in and of itself isn't a BAD THING, right????

Except that it's Mary's mother's recipe.... and Mary delights in shooting people. Sometimes fictional folk...

But I'm not betting my life on the planet that she wouldn't grab hold of Ivan's Ithaca Deerslayer and give me a blast of buckshot to my nether-regions.

Therefore, we need to examine this QUIETLY.

:)

(Have youse ever known me to be quiet???? EVER??????)

Thank you.

Okay, so here's the basic. I used my basic bread recipe for the dough because it's my fave but I loved the texture of Dorothy's too, so use whichever one your little heart desires:

Here  (Dorothy Moore's yeast-dough recipe from late October)

My bread recipe courtesy of Betty Crocker Cookbook....

2 packets of yeast (I use 2 Tablespoons from my big pack of yeast)
3/4 cup very warm water
Mix those two things together, a marriage made in heaven!!!

Then add:

1/4 cup sugar
1 Tablespoon salt
3 Tablespoons Crisco (shortening)
2 2/3 cup very warm water
5 cups flour


3-4 cups flour (added during kneading step)

Mix yeast and 3/4 cup water, let sit a couple of minutes to "work"... then add sugar. salt, Crisco and 5 cups bread flour.... Mix slowly at first, then raise the speed and mix well with regular beater paddle until smooth on medium speed.

Add 3-4 more cups of flour one cup at a time. I find it's usually about 8 1/2 cups altogether for a batch that makes a ton of cinnamon rolls or two nice big 9" loaves of bread. Use dough hook (kneader) to work flour into dough while you chill-lax and do your nails or something. Really, it is pretty darn easy with today's machinery.

Turn out dough onto counter. It's always good if the counter's clean. That is not a necessity, however.

Grease mixing bowl thoroughly. Put somewhat tainted dough back into mixing bowl. Flip it over or grease the top of dough, cover with towel and let rise in warm spot until almost doubled in size. (Depending on temperature this might be half-hour or an hour....)

Punch dough. (Removes latent aggressions)

Divide in half. (Permanent separation, SO SAD!!!!!)   ;)

Roll out one half into large rectangle about 12 x 20 inches, give or take. No need to flour table or counter, bread dough is very elastic and won't stick like pie crust.

Butter dough thoroughly by plopping butter here and there and then spreading it.  Sprinkle with about a ton of brown sugar. Then sprinkle with about 2 Tablespoons cinnamon. (I really don't measure this I just liberally sprinkle sugar and cinnamon like crazy because there's no such thing as too much of either, is there?)

Roll up dough starting from narrower end and rolling tightly....  Slice off uneven ends and then slice the cinnamon roll with a good, serrated bread knife at about 1" (one-inch) increments.

(This is where I got busy with kids and photo-op ended abruptly!!!)

When the roll is fully sliced, prepare a 9 X 13" pan by melting a stick of butter into the pan. (I just popped it into the oven until it was melted....)

Sprinkle butter liberally with BROWN sugar.....  Sprinkle lightly with cinnamon.

Place cinnamon rolls into pan, 3 across and 4 rows....

Allow to sit (proof) for about ten minutes.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 11-13 minutes, until just golden brown.

Turn out onto a large platter or cookie sheet, flipping pan upside down and letting all that gooey wonderful goodness just DRIP down the rolls....

Now here's the best part.... drizzle cream cheese icing over rolls while warm.

Cream Cheese Icing

4 oz (1/2 an 8 oz. block) cream cheese (do not use that pretend neufchatel stuff. I will haunt you.)
4 oz butter (do not skimp and use margarine. I mean, really??????)
1 teaspoon vanilla
3-4 cups confectioners/powdered/10X sugar

Soften cream cheese and butter, mix well with vanilla. Add powdered sugar slowly to avoid a HUGE mess and then beat on medium speed for about 3 minutes... You want the frosting smooth... and fairly thick. If it's thin add a little more sugar.

Do not add milk or water. Please. Trust me, it's awesome this way!!!  Drizzle on cinnamon rolls. (I often make this and pop it into a freezer zip-lock bag when I have cream cheese that's sitting, opened in the fridge. It molds quickly so if no one is around to eat it making frosting with it is a great time saver when I need a quick frosting out of the freezer. Frostings are delicate, though, and they take on the scent and flavor of things around them, even in the freezer, so use it up fairly quickly. Not like the liver you've had in there since last December because it was on sale and you couldn't resist. )  :)

Eat warm or cool but there's usually never any around to GET COOL.

Dorothy Moore's Cinnamon Rolls!

YES!

Eat your hearts out, people!!!

I have the inside track on Dorothy Moore's Cinnamon Rolls and they're melt-in-your-mouth. What you probably don't know and the reason I messed up this blog with the wrong name, is that Dorothy is Mary Connealy's mother.

And she's wonderful. Beyond words. Delightful. And her cinnamon rolls???

Oh my stars!!!!!!!

DELICIOUS!!!!

Here she is:  (Yes, I finally got the picture to load properly!)

I had the pleasure... and honor... of meeting Mary's mother recently and:

A.: I fell in love with her.

B. Mary's good looks clearly come from her beautiful mother.

C. She loves to bake and so do I!!!

D. We could have talked for hours. Literally!

So here they are, a wonderful recipe and a little different from any cinnamon roll I've ever had, but wonderfully delicious...

Dorothy Connealy’s Cinnamon Rolls

3 cups flour

½  cup sugar

1 egg

3 tsp. yeast

½ teaspoon salt

Mix dry ingredients together. Add egg and water (about a cup) and blend/knead to bread dough consistency. Let rise in warm place until nearly doubled.

Punch down dough. Roll out into a thin, large rectangle. Spread with butter. Sprinkle brown sugar and cinnamon evenly across dough. Now Dorothy is my kind of gal, she doesn't really measure the butter or brown sugar, you know?

She spreads one... then sprinkles the other. So just do it until it looks good. A smearing of butter, topped with brown sugar, then sprinkled liberally with cinnamon.

 Roll up, starting from l-o-n-g side, into a roll. Slice into ¾ -1” slices. Place slices close together (not touching) in prepared pan (15 x 10, maybe?) Prepare the pan by melting a stick of butter in bottom of baking dish. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. (You can see this is getting to be a habit, right? The brown sugar/cinnamon/butter thing?)  Proof in a warm (150 degree) oven for 15-20 minutes.

  

Bake rolls in 325 or 350 degree oven for eleven minutes. Turn pan upside down onto dish  big enough to hold the rolls and glaze.

Serve warm.

You will get pics if I can figure out how to get them off my phone! I've got a great one of Dorothy... and the rolls! Before I ate them all!