Baking Adventures

The Fun Foodie can eat with the best of them, and I also happen to be a decent cook (some would even say I’m very good).  But baking has never been my specialty.  Luckily, The Fun Wife is an awesome baker so I get to be the recipient of many delectable home-baked treats.  Recently, our oldest offspring (we’ll call him The Fun Son #1) celebrated a birthday.  He’s a fan of Sesame Street’s Oscar the Grouch so, naturally, The Fun Wife came up with this:

It’s a chocolate cake topped with a food-dyed buttercream (both scratch-made, of course).  Okay, so the marshmallows and gummi worm were store-bought.  She’s not Martha Stewart.  Thank heavens.

When I’m not low-carbing, one of my guilty pleasures is cinnamon rolls.  As hard-core chocolate-lovers, we had to find a way to bring these two together in holy matrimony.  Recently, we experimented using Callebaut semi-sweet chocolate.  Callebaut is a high-end European chocolate that is the choice of gourmet pastry chefs world-wide.  We buy ours at Whole Foods and it is amazing!  If it’s not readily available to you, Ghirardelli is an excellent choice, especially for the price.  If you can’t find Ghirardelli where you live, move!

Anyhizzle, the experiment was a smashing success!  Seriously, if I could only find an investor, I think we could be rich.  It was as simple as adding a generous heaping of grated chocolate to a fairly standard cinnamon roll filling.  We used dark brown sugar, which has a stronger caramel-like flavor.  It’s a great compliment to the chocolate.  Topped ’em off with more grated chocolate and they looked like a million bucks!  Tasted like a billion!

Yeah, that’s how we roll.

CINNAMON ROLL DOUGH
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 ounce package active dry yeast
1 cup warm milk (105-110 degrees)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted
1 tsp salt
2 eggs

FILLING
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
2 1/2 TBS cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, softened
Grated chocolate

ICING
8 TBS butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 cup cream cheese
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
Grated chocolate (garnish)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk.  Add sugar, butter, salt, eggs and flour and mix well.  Knead the dough into a large ball.  Cover and let rise in a warm place for about an hour, or until the dough has doubled in size.  Roll the dough out on a lightly floured surface.  It should roll out to about 21″ x 16″ and be about 1/4 inch thick.  Mix the filling ingredients together.  Spread softened butter over the surface of the dough and sprinkle filling mixture evenly.  Working carefully from the longer side, roll the dough down to the bottom edge.  Cut the rolled dough into 12 even pieces and place, evenly spaced, onto a lightly greased baking pan.  Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until lightly browned.