Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Do you like sugar? Do you like cinnamon? Do you find yourself mindlessly nibbling on bread throughout the day? Okay, maybe the last one's just me, but once you try this recipe you'll definitely be screaming out "ALL OF THE ABOVE BABY."

It's a long one, but it's not so bad and I mean come'on, something this delicious is worth it.

LET'S DO THIS THANG.

For the Dough You'll Need:

2 1/4 tsps (1 envelope) active dry yeast

1/4 cup water

1 tsp sugar

2 3/4 cups all purpose flour

1/4 cup sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/3 cup milk

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

For the Filling You'll Need:

1/2 cup brown sugar          |  you can use all brown sugar, all regular sugar or any mix

1/2 cup sugar                     |  in between as long as it equals on heaping cup ;)

2 tsps cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 cup butter, browned

In a lil bowl, mix together the yeast, water and sugar. Stir until all the yeast balls (attractive) have dissolved. Set aside for ten minutes - it'll get big and foamy, yay!

In a large mixing bowl, whisk together TWO cups of flour (save the 3/4s for later), sugar and salt. Let it be.

In another bowl, whip up those eggs, set those aside too (you need to muck up a lot of bowls and counter-space for this, but it's totally worth it).

Heat the butter and milk together until the butter is all melted - you can probably do this in the microwave, but I did it in a small pot. Remove from heat and mix in the vanilla.

Here's the fun bit - bring all these ingredients together in your large bowl. So pour in the butter/milk/vanilla concoction in with the flour/sugar/salt mixture and.. well.. mix! Add the foamy yeast and mix. Then finally, add the eggs, and, you guessed it, mix. Things didn't seem to be mixing very well, so I brought out my old-fart hand mixer. It did the trick. Now add the remaining 3/4 cup of flour and stir stir stir. I know what you're thinking, PUT THE FLOUR DOWN. The dough should be sticky, it wants to be sticky, let it be sticky!

Grease a big-old bowl and plop in the dough. Cover with plastic wrap and a clean towel. Place the big bowl'o dough in a warm space for about an hour/or until dough has doubled in size.

Eat something. You've been through a lot and we're only half way there.

While the dough is rising, mix the sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg together in a bowl - set it aside. Melt the butter in a pan over low heat until brown. You'll know you're getting there when the most heavenly scent touches your nostrils. I mean really, nothing in this whole universe could smell better. Don't stand around smelling it for too long, because things can get ugly FAST (just ask my totally scorched batch of butter). Remove from heat and poor into a bowl lickity-split - set aside. 

Grease and flour a 9x5x3 inch loaf pan - set aside.

Once the dough is nice and big, you're gonna throw some flour on it and just beat the shit outta it. Or knead it. Whatever. I used 2 spoons of flour - basically keep sprinkling and kneading until it looses it's super stickiness. Put the dough back in the bowl for about 5 minutes while you get your counter all cleaned-up and lightly floured. Flour your hands and your rolling pin, take the dough out of the bowl and put it onto the counter.  Roll the dough until it's about 12 inches tall and 20 inches long. Use a pastry brush to spread all of that yummy browned butter over the dough. Sprinkle that whole bowl of sugar/cinnamon/nutmeg on top - don't be shy. I also used a spoon with a little bit of pressure to smush all the sugary goodness into the buttery dough.

I used a pizza cutter to slice the dough vertically into six equalish strips. Stack the strips on top of each other and slice into six equalish squares. Place each stack in the pan so the top looks like the side of a book. Place a towel over it again and let sit until it fills out a bit more - about 45 minutes. 

Once the oven is at 350 degrees, pop in your loaf pan (without the towel, of course!) and bake for 30-35 minutes - the top should be nice and brown.

Let it hang out in the pan for about 20-30 minutes. Take a butter knife to the edges of the pan to free your delicious creation, put it on a pretty plate and flip it so it's right-side-up again. Plug in the kettle, make a tea and watch the bread magically disappear. 

YUM.

YUM.

A MILLION TIMES YUM.

room inspiration

I am in the midst of giving my bedroom a whole new look. It's tough, but fun. Ya see, I've lived in four places in just over five years and needless to say, I've never really taken the time to settle in. Combine that with various hand-me-downs, picked-out-by-moms and random junk from my teens, my room is a straight up mess. So now that I'm all finished with Uni and feeling like a real-life big girl, I've decided it's time for a change! Huzzah! Aside from a couple of arty-crafty project things, I haven't really gotten down to it. What I have done, is browse.. peruse.. explore.. spend a disturbing amount of time on zee interwebs.

Here's what I like:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Now, not every bit of every picture is working for me. And not every picture is even a bedroom. But overarching themes seem to be: 1. pops of colour, 2. lots of pillows and blankets and comfortable things, 3. a bunch of interesting and different things that all go. 

Here's what I need:

a gigantic garbage.. uhh, donation bag

primer

turquoise paint

some old frames

fabric for curtains and pillows

unwanted books (sorry, books)

striped throw blanket of sorts

some sewing skills

Free People

One of my favourite things to do is online window shop. It takes up a lot less energy than actual factual window shopping and isn't as much as a tease. I mean comeon, to physically be next to a piece of clothing (furniture, art, whatever), maybe you even go so far as to try it on, but no matter how much you fall in love, you're just window shopping (aka you're broke) so you CAN'T HAVE IT. Such a tease. Online window shopping takes away that pain.. sorta. It's much easier to walk away from a screen with a picture of great dress than an actual great dress - it's also much easier and less creepier to revisit said picture on an embarrassingly high number of times.

ANYWHO, one of my new favourite sites/stores to online window shop is Free People. Everything is absolutely beautiful and has that "ohh I just threw this on in the dark don't I look goddamn fantastic" quality about it. Effortless. I mean, just look at their August Lookbook. So fresh, amirite?

This store is totally out of my range (both location wise and price wise) but I can absolutely promise you that if I ever have the means to buy whatever the Zac Effbomb I want, Free People and I will take our relationship to the next level. 

Oh baby.