I love cinnamon buns. I lurve cinnamon buns. I’ve just had a hard time with them when it comes to, you know, making them. As an amateur baker I have a healthy respect/fear for breads. I know that it’s just basic chemistry and that it’s been around since before trains, electricity, and iPhones. Intellectually I know it’s not that complicated, but I’ve kept a safe distance after a making couple of very sad attempts at cinnamon buns a few years ago.
And at the same time? I really don’t like that something so delicious, flaky & delicate bested me.
A little while ago, my friend Holly tweeted about making cinnamon buns & they just sounded so good! I asked for the recipe she used & she sent it over with some encouragement & I already knew I couldn’t want to try it.
What do they say on kitchen stadium? ”Allez cuisine!” :)
After you’ve rolled out & cut the buns you let them expand into each other a little more…
Looking promising!
You even make a delicious glaze!
The results were so good! Just as flaky and sweet as I’d hoped, and I think they’ve even cured my fear of baking breads. This will only lead to good, carb-heavy, things. But those are the best kind of good things, don’t you think?
Try your hand at the recipe here
ps – What do you think of my new red hair? It’s crazy vibrant and I’m kind of in love with it! I think I’m going to stay a red head for the winter :)
Halloween is one of my favourite holidays- I’m a Halloween and Christmas girl. I also love using my hands and when I figured out that I liked carving pumpkins a serious seasonal addition was born! This Halloween was really exciting because after sharing photos and stories from opposite sides of the country for years, Amber came over and carved pumpkins with me!! And she rocked it. The girl is seriously handy with a knife!
I usually carve 2-4 pumpkins a year, so I’ve done a lots over the past five years but my favourite is to do a set of characters…
Twilight: so bad it’s good!!
Two of my favourite characters from such an amazing movie!
…because True Blood has been one of my big addictions in the last year!
It’s fun to have people get excited when they come to our house on Halloween, but I really love the carving process! I wish it was something I could do more than once a year- maybe I should try carving stamps and get into block printing…
Tonight, in keeping with our other Halloween tradition, Jesse and I are going to be eating Sloppy Joes & Sloppy Janes (that’s a Sloppy Joe with veggie ground round!) and watch The Evil Dead while the neighbours try to guess who the bucktoothed guy on my pumpkin is. I think it’s going to be a really good night :)
Do you have any Halloween traditions?
Pretty patchwork for creative mending- you could make beautiful custom elbow patches this way!
[karenbarbe]
Delightfully non-traditional containers for flower arrangements, from waffle cones to coffee carriers
[SDesignUnit]
As a knitter I love the detail in this hat & as someone who loves big pops of colour I want it for my closet!
[sennursasa]
Adorable & tiny letterpress calendar, the designs are just perfect & I love it’s log stand
[modcloth]
A foxy pouch that would be so cute for a little girl!
The foxes are currently sold out, but you can see more here
[blueberrybandit]
A sweet coral & aqua take on one of my favourite quotes
[marykatemcdevitt]
Salted Caramel Hot Chocolates are one of my favourite treats in the fall- the taste of the chocolate is made a hundred times tastier with a little dash of salt. That being said, my favourite part of salted caramel hot chocolates… are the salted caramel tops! So I wanted to let you in on the way to get a perfectly delicious salted caramel top :)
Once you’ve made your favourite hot chocolate recipe (I totally recommend this Belgian Hot Chocolate Recipe, holy yum!), mix up some whipped cream. I love making mine at home, even just for a small cup, and if you make yours on your own you can make it more delicious by adding a half shot of your favourite flavour syrup to the whipped cream. Make sure you add the syrup slowly, and make sure you don’t over flavour it, better to have a hint of flavour than a batch you can’t use!
Making caramel, cinnamon or mocha whipped cream for chocolate drinks is super tasty!
To get the caramel top just right you’ll want a mix of sweet and salty, and I find that mixing turbinado sugar (also known as raw sugar) and sea salt gets the taste just right.
This is my magic ratio:
The nice thing is that the sugar and sea salt crystals are about the same size so they’re easy to mix at home. If you’d like it to taste even a little more like it would at your favourite coffee shop? Track down some smoked sea salt and use it as a highlight to your normal sea salt.
Confession: As much as I love fancy hot chocolates, my second favourite kind is cheap hot chocolate! If I can’t get a fancy, fluffy sweet perfect cup, I’m all about the powdery, community club hockey arena grade hot chocolate.
But “don’t properly mix the powder into the milk” doesn’t make much of a recipe post ;)
Details: dress – vintage, bag – vintage, shoes – Target
It’s getting close to not being dress safe in my little city, so I’ve been having fun getting dressy at work while the summer sunbeams are still strong. I found this while I was foraging for dresses in the city, and as soon as I saw the collar I was a goner. I thought it was straight out of Madeline & Amber thinks it looks like it’s from Sailor Moon, but it’s not quite Halloween costume material either way.
Maybe if I added a yellow hat? :)
The bag is one of my favourites because it was a friend’s father’s school bag when he was a little boy. It’s eye catching to begin with, but when I imagine it being taken to school like a tiny suitcase it’s instantly a hundred times more dear.
Do you have a favourite accessory with history?
This weekend when Sunday morning came it was time to take Jesse to the airport so he could go out of town for a business trip. After I dropping him off at the airport I did some errands and stopped by Freckled Nest’s studio to get my camera… but as soon as I walked in there was a commotion at the back of the studio!
I couldn’t see what had made the noise, so I walked towards the back of the space. Nothing happened for my first few steps but then suddenly there was another commotion and I could see what was making the noise- there was a sparrow flying around the back of the studio!
I have no idea how she got inside our studio- but she wasn’t happy about the situation. She was tearing around the space as close to the ceilings as she could get, and I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t leave until I got her out, but our ceilings are high and there was no way I’d be able to catch her with a blanket like the internet was suggesting.
I wasn’t sure what to do, but it was clear she’d been inside for a while and was stressed so I got a bowl of water and granola bar, and placed them in a spot she’d landed on before so she would be likely to explore the food & be more comfortable because of it. It didn’t take any convincing to get her eating, just a little sitting still. After watching her eat for a little while I came up with a very simple plan- I’d interrupt her & open the door so she could fly out when she came back for more food!
It took a lot longer to get her outside than I expected, but it wasn’t for lack of her landing on the granola bar & snacking. She was very dear, but had a very one track mind. After 15 mins or so she landed on the granola bar again, but this time she looked out the door and saw the rest of the world! She took off with a big swoop up towards the sky and was gone before I could blink.
Leigh-Ann and I love having guests at the studio, but this is not what I had in mind! Maybe she saw the birds in my tattoo through the window last week, or maybe the name Freckled Nest on the window sounded inviting to her? :)
Friday Finds are back- and just in time for me to post the 50th, how auspicious! Of all the things that I missed about blogging while I was on my break last month, making Etsy treasuries every week topped the list. I didn’t realize how much I love pouring through the listings and pulling the right listings for a certain mood, especially with all the beautiful fall listings that are out there. I hope you’re happy to see them back too, since they’ve been going on for nearly a year now :)
With that in mind, this week’s treasury is inspired warm fuzzy feelings, the beautiful fall weather and colours, and not the frost that’s been on my windshield in the mornings this week…
Want to explore more? See the treasury on etsy
What brought light to your world this week?
