Happy New Year, everyone
Low key holiday Chez SWM...
After dealing with three atypical but somehow typical for the winter holiday customer issues in the three days of work last week, I was ready for a day off.
After dinner at ebonlock's, we headed up to moonlightnrain and lizzzie_lou's for the annual New Year's Eve party (and annual 'seeing them' reunion). It involved too many nibbly food on my part, a couple rounds of Monikers, a Kickstarter card game E-- bought for M'n'R for Christmas that wound up to be really fun, and finished off with a game of Cards Against Humanity that I actually participated in this year. We watched the ball drop on Times Square via CNN and tape delay, then packed up to head home in the cold snap. I fell into bed at 1am.
I was slow getting up the following morning, not dragging myself out of my nice warm bed until almost 9am, but then immediately got to work putting the second iteration of what I've dubbed "lazy person's mini pecan pumpkin caramel sweet rolls with vegan cream cheese icing" into the oven.
(as always, click to enbiggen)
The lazy person part: I've been experimenting with using Pillsbury Grands Big & Buttery Crescent rolls instead of making the dough. Because--lazy. The filling is Trader Jode's Pumpkin Caramel Sauce, which E-- found this past month, mixed in with a little corn starch and sprinkled with packaged chopped pecans. The icing is from this Pioneer Woman recipe, quartered.
[It's more like 'guidelines']----
This second time around (which was much more successful than the first), I think the key was upping the baking temperature from the crescent recipe mandated 350°F to 375°F.
Spray a 9" round baking pan (I used a disposable aluminum round) with baking spray.
To assemble, I unrolled the crescent rolls and divided it into four rectangles which I placed on a large cutting board sprinkled with a little powdered sugar to keep it from sticking too badly. Pressed the diagonal seams together on both sides to keep them as rectangles. Spread the caramel-cornstarch (*), on the squares, leaving about 1/4" unsmeared on each side, then rolled them from the short end to the other side, pressing gently on the seam to try to seal it. Repeat this for all four rectangles, cut each roll into thirds, and evenly distribute in the prepared pan, leaving a little space around them. Pop into the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes (depending on your oven) until the tops are golden brown.
While the rolls bake, mix up the icing. As soon as the rolls come out of the oven, dab or spread the icing on. The heat from the rolls will melt the icing and let it ooze around lie it's supposed to. :)
The one major change to the icing I made, being lactose-intolerant as well as E--, was to use vegan cream cheese (still used the butter). I think it turned out pretty well.
(*) - I used 1 Tbsp. of corn starch with about 1/3 a jar of the sauce this second time around. The point was to attempt to get the caramel to firm up during baking and stay in the rolls, because during my first attempt, all the caramel simply melted out of the rolls and wound up in a big pool on the bottom of the pan. Tasty, but not what I was aiming for. :)
----
With one trial run under my belt from Christmas, putting them together and getting them into the oven took only 10 minutes--hence, "lazy".
The one thing I think I would change next time is how much icing I used. I like icing, so I used the entire quarter batch (I initially made a half batch, then made two batches with it). I think it'd be just as good if I paired it down to maybe about a sixth of the batch (or, a third of the half batch). I'm also thinking about trying this again, since I still have on more can of the crescent rolls and a half container of the cream cheese, with different flavors. Maybe traditional cinnamon rolls? Orange? Possibilities could be endless.
After bestowing the latest attempt on E-- for breakfast (along with bacon and my usual coffee for me) and watching a tiny bit of the Winter Classic (enough to see the Caps go up 2-1), I peeled myself away from the game to hit Whole Foods, properly guessing that (a) they would be open and (b) at 11am on New Year's Day, it was sparsely populated. Despite intentions earlier this week, this Homesick Texan recipe for a black eyed pea, sausage, and kale soup was firmly lodged into my head as 'dinner', because even though I am not Southern and never grew up with the Southern rituals of black eyed peas and greens for New Year's, I've kind of developed it since discovering it was a Thing. So in addition to the normal groceries, I picked up fixin's to make that in the crockpot alongside the Pioneer Woman's skillet cornbread. Unsurprisingly, Whole Foods was completely out of the dried black eyed peas called for in the recipe, but I lucked out and managed to scrounge two hidden and likely forgotten cans of black eyed peas out from waaaaaaay in the back, when the tag on the shelf said 'temporarily out of stock'. So, go me.
After prepping everything, minus the garlic, celery, cayenne, and chipotle in adobo (since I decided to offer it to lynthia and her family for dinner) but with just a dash of powdered chipotle powder to make up for the latter's lack, for addition to the crock pot, I hied myself back over to E--'s to finish watching the last two most recent episodes of "Agents of SHIELD" so I'm all caught up now. \o/
Back at home, I dinked around a bit on my original "Dragon Age: Inquisition" game until it was time to make the cornbread, pack everything up, and headed over to Lynthia's for dinner with her family and our regular Thursday night video game hanging out.
Then, it was 10pm, and I had to go to bed so I could work today. :P
After dealing with three atypical but somehow typical for the winter holiday customer issues in the three days of work last week, I was ready for a day off.
After dinner at ebonlock's, we headed up to moonlightnrain and lizzzie_lou's for the annual New Year's Eve party (and annual 'seeing them' reunion). It involved too many nibbly food on my part, a couple rounds of Monikers, a Kickstarter card game E-- bought for M'n'R for Christmas that wound up to be really fun, and finished off with a game of Cards Against Humanity that I actually participated in this year. We watched the ball drop on Times Square via CNN and tape delay, then packed up to head home in the cold snap. I fell into bed at 1am.
I was slow getting up the following morning, not dragging myself out of my nice warm bed until almost 9am, but then immediately got to work putting the second iteration of what I've dubbed "lazy person's mini pecan pumpkin caramel sweet rolls with vegan cream cheese icing" into the oven.
(as always, click to enbiggen)
The lazy person part: I've been experimenting with using Pillsbury Grands Big & Buttery Crescent rolls instead of making the dough. Because--lazy. The filling is Trader Jode's Pumpkin Caramel Sauce, which E-- found this past month, mixed in with a little corn starch and sprinkled with packaged chopped pecans. The icing is from this Pioneer Woman recipe, quartered.
[It's more like 'guidelines']----
This second time around (which was much more successful than the first), I think the key was upping the baking temperature from the crescent recipe mandated 350°F to 375°F.
Spray a 9" round baking pan (I used a disposable aluminum round) with baking spray.
To assemble, I unrolled the crescent rolls and divided it into four rectangles which I placed on a large cutting board sprinkled with a little powdered sugar to keep it from sticking too badly. Pressed the diagonal seams together on both sides to keep them as rectangles. Spread the caramel-cornstarch (*), on the squares, leaving about 1/4" unsmeared on each side, then rolled them from the short end to the other side, pressing gently on the seam to try to seal it. Repeat this for all four rectangles, cut each roll into thirds, and evenly distribute in the prepared pan, leaving a little space around them. Pop into the oven and bake for 18-20 minutes (depending on your oven) until the tops are golden brown.
While the rolls bake, mix up the icing. As soon as the rolls come out of the oven, dab or spread the icing on. The heat from the rolls will melt the icing and let it ooze around lie it's supposed to. :)
The one major change to the icing I made, being lactose-intolerant as well as E--, was to use vegan cream cheese (still used the butter). I think it turned out pretty well.
(*) - I used 1 Tbsp. of corn starch with about 1/3 a jar of the sauce this second time around. The point was to attempt to get the caramel to firm up during baking and stay in the rolls, because during my first attempt, all the caramel simply melted out of the rolls and wound up in a big pool on the bottom of the pan. Tasty, but not what I was aiming for. :)
----
With one trial run under my belt from Christmas, putting them together and getting them into the oven took only 10 minutes--hence, "lazy".
The one thing I think I would change next time is how much icing I used. I like icing, so I used the entire quarter batch (I initially made a half batch, then made two batches with it). I think it'd be just as good if I paired it down to maybe about a sixth of the batch (or, a third of the half batch). I'm also thinking about trying this again, since I still have on more can of the crescent rolls and a half container of the cream cheese, with different flavors. Maybe traditional cinnamon rolls? Orange? Possibilities could be endless.
After bestowing the latest attempt on E-- for breakfast (along with bacon and my usual coffee for me) and watching a tiny bit of the Winter Classic (enough to see the Caps go up 2-1), I peeled myself away from the game to hit Whole Foods, properly guessing that (a) they would be open and (b) at 11am on New Year's Day, it was sparsely populated. Despite intentions earlier this week, this Homesick Texan recipe for a black eyed pea, sausage, and kale soup was firmly lodged into my head as 'dinner', because even though I am not Southern and never grew up with the Southern rituals of black eyed peas and greens for New Year's, I've kind of developed it since discovering it was a Thing. So in addition to the normal groceries, I picked up fixin's to make that in the crockpot alongside the Pioneer Woman's skillet cornbread. Unsurprisingly, Whole Foods was completely out of the dried black eyed peas called for in the recipe, but I lucked out and managed to scrounge two hidden and likely forgotten cans of black eyed peas out from waaaaaaay in the back, when the tag on the shelf said 'temporarily out of stock'. So, go me.
After prepping everything, minus the garlic, celery, cayenne, and chipotle in adobo (since I decided to offer it to lynthia and her family for dinner) but with just a dash of powdered chipotle powder to make up for the latter's lack, for addition to the crock pot, I hied myself back over to E--'s to finish watching the last two most recent episodes of "Agents of SHIELD" so I'm all caught up now. \o/
Back at home, I dinked around a bit on my original "Dragon Age: Inquisition" game until it was time to make the cornbread, pack everything up, and headed over to Lynthia's for dinner with her family and our regular Thursday night video game hanging out.
Then, it was 10pm, and I had to go to bed so I could work today. :P