Category: Baking

Friday Faves #98! Carrot Cake Roll and a Mini Cookbook!

4/11/2019

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The verdict is in! This year, in order to accommodate everyone's schedules, we are doing Easter Brunch at our house! I am actually pretty excited about it! All of the kids who live in town, and those "adopted" into our family kids and various other friends and family are going to attend church with us at 8:30 AM. My husband and I will be singing in the choir. I am going to love looking down from the choir loft and seeing so many loved ones there with us listening to the Easter message. We get done with our Sunday meetings at 10:30. Since we live across the street from our chapel, it will be easy to come home and pull out all of the food that I will have prepared the day before and enjoy a lovely brunch together!
And what will the menu be, you ask? Well, that is still in the planning stages. But one of our favorite dessert/brunchy foods is a nice cake roll! We usually make and give away pumpkin rolls at Christmas time. (I can't believe we haven't shared our recipe for those yet)! For Easter, I thought a nice Carrot Cake Roll sounded like just the thing for Spring! I've made one to try it out! It is definitely going on my Easter Brunch menu!

Now that it is just my husband and I at home, I have started buying just a few carrots at a time so that they won't get rubbery before I use them. I had these in my fridge and needed to do something with them. But, actually, the recipe only needed 1 carrot!

As I began to create this recipe, I started thinking about other cake roll recipes I've made or eaten. The nice things about cake rolls is that you get a lot of bang for your buck! They are pretty simple to make, they don't have to bake very long and they look beautiful when they are all finished and decorated and sliced! Best of all, they taste deliciously decadent! All of these thoughts helped me to decide that cake rolls would be the Friday Faves subject for this week! Not only that, I came up with a nice little surprise for our subscribers! You may or may not know that our subscribers all get a secret link to a secret page on our blog where they can download printables just for them! Today, I am giving a nice little Spring/Easter Gift of a Mini Cookbook with 3 Cake Roll Recipes, along with some tips and variations for making them to our subscribers! All you have to do to download your own copy is to subscribe to our blog! Don't worry, I only send 1 email a week. I welcome new subscribers and give them the link to the secret page and tell you about what we are up to. It's painless! All you have to do is put your email in the box at the top of this page, or on the pop-up that appears.
Now, on to the Carrot Cake Roll!

Super cute with the piped on carrots, right?

This cake roll has the traditional carrot cake flavors of cinnamon and carrot with some sweetness of pineapple. The filling is a cream cheese filling with pineapple added as well. You don't have to add the pineapple, you can make it a plain cream cheese filling. But, my husband loved the pineapple in the filling. The frosting is our regular popular recipe. Those carrots aren't fondant, I just piped them on with the frosting. I am so excited to serve this at our Easter Brunch! And you can make it and serve it as well! Just follow us here on the blog and we will send you the link to the Mini Cookbook with this Carrot Cake Roll recipe plus 2 others that are faves, with ideas for delicious cake roll variations.
I printed off my own copy of the Mini Cookbook and put it right into my Bloggelicious Baking Binder under the cake section. You can order your own Bloggelicious Baking Printables here. It is a great way to organize all of the recipes that you print from online sites. I find it so much easier to print them off when I use them often, rather that searching for them again and again online.

Now, on to the rest of my menu! Deviled Eggs are a must. Some croissants with various fillings to choose from? Do you have any great ideas for me? Let me know in the comments with a link to your recipe! I am open for some wonderful ideas! Thanks! I'll let you know the final menu soon.

I can't forget a nice tablescape as well!

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Favorite Breads to Bake for Easter

3/29/2019

6 Comments

Do you have a big family dinner at your house for Easter? Or, do you keep things simple and avoid going to too much trouble when it comes to food on that day? Either way, a nice fluffy loaf of bread, or rolls and maybe some cinnamon rolls to eat with all of those eggs in the morning is something that is always welcome. The nice thing about baking bread is that you can bake it in advance of the day that you need it and then have it for dinner or a light meal.
Over time, on our blog, we have posted some pretty delicious recipes for bread that would be perfect for an Easter meal. On today's Friday Faves #96, we thought we would share some of our favorite loaves with you. We will supply the buttons that lead to those recipes so that you can have them at your fingertips when you are ready to start baking. You're welcome! These loaves of Easter Bread would make awesome gifts to share with friends this Easter season, too!

This Braided Bread is one of the favorite loaves that I learned to bake early in my marriage. It is easy and quick as far as breads go and very good.

You can read about the story behind this bread on this post. Click the button to go straight to the recipe.

Braided Bread

This Portuguese Easter Bread is a recipe adapted from my Sister-in-Law's family recipe. It is a big part of my memories of her.

Read about the traditions behind this Portuguese Braided Bread as related by my sister-in-law on this link. I think I could also form this bread like the braided loaf and tuck the eggs in the braid. That would look pretty!

Sweet Portuguese Easter Bread

This is the best and easiest free form baguette type loaf that you will find. We shared it awhile back and it definitely deserves another look just in case you missed it!

I shared this recipe a couple of years ago. It was given to me by my friend, Anita who got it from a friend of her's named Julie. It is so simple and delicious to make. I feel like many of you may have missed this amazing recipe. Check out the original post here.

Julie's Simple Free-Form Bread

I fell in love with these rolls the first time I made them. Light and delicious rolls like these are perfect for Easter.

I made cinnamon rolls out of part of this roll recipe that came out really good as well! www.3winksdesign.com/home/fluffy-and-delicious-potato-rollsThis post will show you how to do both. The recipe is on there, too.

Fluffy and Delicious Potato Rolls

If you like to eat cinnamon rolls, but you also like to eat vegan, here are some quick vegan cinnamon rolls that Maddy shared.

These rolls were shared on a Friday Fave over 2 years ago! You can see what the other favorite things were by going to this post. Or, click the button to go to the recipe.

Instant Vegan Cinnamon Rolls

Now I have to decide which bread I will make for this year! Let me know if you are baking bread this Easter. We hope you might give one of our loaves a try! Happy Baking!

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Sprouted Wheat Oatmeal Cranberry Cookies

3/19/2019

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I have posted in past articles about making and using sprouted wheat flour. While this process seemed overwhelming to me at first, I am a total convert to sprouting wheat and making flour and I am always on the look-out for ways to incorporate it into my baking. (Also here, here, and here!) You can click on the previous links if you want to know more about the process and see some great recipes.

One thing that everyone who grinds their own flour knows is that you should grind enough to use right away and just grind it as you need it in order to keep the nutritional value in the final product. So, recently, I found myself with some excess sprouted wheat flour that I needed to use up. I had yet to make cookies with sprouted wheat flour, so I decided that the day had come to see how the flour worked in some of my husbands favorite oatmeal cookies. I was out of raisins, but I did have Craisins, so that is how these cookies were born.

The test was a success and these cookies were crispy with just the right amount of chewiness.
It never ceases to amaze me how much lighter the sprouted wheat flour is compared to regular whole wheat flour and how the warm, nutty flavor does not overwhelm like it can in regular whole wheat baked goods. As a matter of fact, I couldn't really tell that these were made from whole wheat rather than regular all purpose flour, although if they were side by side, I believe that these would have the richer flavor.

And yum! I love Craisins in an oatmeal cookie!

Sprouted Wheat Oatmeal Craisin Cookies

Have any of you tried the sprouting wheat for flour method? How have your results been and tell me what you have used this flour for. I would love to hear and try new things.