Homemade Buns

First - In a small saucepan combine, milk, water and unsalted butter. I put on medium heat so it would not scald the milk as much.

Next - I combined 1.5 C flour, 1 (.25 ounce) instant yeast packet, 2 TBSP white sugar, kosher salt; mix well using the paddle attachment.

Once the butter mixture reaches 120° remove from stove top and slowly pour in the mixer.

Now you will need to mix in the eggs. 

Once the eggs are mixed in switch to the dough hook attachment, then you will need to mix the rest of the flour. I found it best to mix in 1/2 C at a time; beating well after each addition. 

Once the dough becomes elasticity, smooth and has pulled together you have made the dough. Woohoo! 

Place your dough into a greased bowl; cover with a light cloth (I use cheese cloth) and let the dough proof for 30 - 45 minutes.

Now that the dough has doubled in size. 

Here comes the fun part; now you can start forming your buns by rolling them into a ball and when you place them on the greased parchment paper lined cookies sheet flatten just a wee bit. 

I only made 6 buns, they were rather larger though so you can easily make 8 - 12 average size buns (depending on what your definition of average is) with this recipe. The rolls will need to proof again, this time 45 minutes to 1 hour (be sure to cover them with the cloth again). 

After and hour place them in your preheated oven. I am not sure the actual time it took for the buns to cook; I am guessing around 18 minutes. I set my timer for 10 minutes though and just kept watching them after that. Once they reached a golden brown color I took them out of the oven.

I made half plain buns and half dried minced onion buns. 

For the onion buns I  mixed about 1/4 C into the dough mixture (once the plain buns were already formed); once I rolled them into a ball I brushed only the onion buns with egg whites and sprinkled more dried minced onion along with onion powder on top of them. 

To compliment the buns I used Chris's step dad's brisket recipe. It takes 10 - 12 hours (depending on the size of your brisket) so I had to wait a whole day before I was able to try these delicious rolls. 

This is what the brisket looked like when it first started cooking.

Tada, this brisket sandwich was greatness! 

Here is the bun recipe I used

Cinnamon Sugar French Toast

Melt in your Mouth Cinnamon Cupcakes

Yesterday I was craving homemade cinnamon bread and could not get it off of my mind. As some of you may already know, making bread from scratch is a tad time consuming. There was not enough time remaining in my day to make some so I came up with an alternative plan.

Instead I decided to take my homemade vanilla bean cupcake recipe and add  2 TBSP of ground cinnamon and see if that would do the trick for my craving. Oh my it did, they were absolutely define with just enough cinnamon.

I could have served the cupcakes as muffins; I knew if I made cinnamon cream cheese frosting though that would top it off nicely.

Half way through mixing in the confectioner sugar into the wet ingredients for the frosting I tasted to see how the flavor was coming, I stopped right there. Wow, it was already perfect and I had not finished adding the remaining amount of sugar that I typically use. With that I knew the consistency would not be as stiff, so the frosting would run more then I typically prefer it to. I did not want to touch that deliciousness that I had just created and I am glad I didn't.

The frosting still turned out nice. I topped it off with crushed graham cracker on some and other I added half of a graham cracker and a piece of chocolate.

Needless to say these cupcakes were a big hit and I will be making theses again.

If you have a favorite vanilla bean recipe try adding 2 TBSP of ground cinnamon like I did, it is scrumptious.