Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! It's already the last day of 2010 which also means my winter break is going to end soon. :( This year zoomed by for me. So many things happened: applying to colleges, finishing my SATs, making my own blog, becoming more interested in baking, having my grandparents from Taiwan come and visit, and much, much more. I could mention more, but it would take too much time. I don't exactly have any resolutions for this new year because I end up not following them. Enough of my rambling, I hope everyone has a great year ahead of them.

I made these cookies once before, back when I didn't have a blog. I brought them to a church gathering and I remember this guy being very disappointed when the cookies ran out. I made these again for my youth group Christmas gathering. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com and slightly adapted it to my own tastes.

Actually, here's my review from a year ago:
This cookie is literally the best chocolate chip cookie i have ever made. It looked like it was store bought. all the cc cookies i ever made turned out kind of pale or cakey. these cookies taste nice and chewy. My brother even rated them a 9.6 out of 10 (that is a pretty high rating based on his tastes) You should definitely use this recipe. What I did was use a little lesser white sugar (so that it wouldn't be too sweet), use a little less butter (so it wouldn't be too fatty),and use the same amount of everything else other than the chocolate chips. For the chocolate chips i used about at most a half cup. DO NOT use the full amount of chocolate chips unless you like your cookies being full of chocolate chips. I then used a tablespoon to spoon out the dough onto the baking sheets. Afterward, you should kind of "smush" them so that they are flatter and not round. Otherwise, they will stay round. This cookie was the best cc cookie recipe i ever tried!

I love the easiness of making this cookie. All you have to do is get all the ingredients and quickly mix it together. I didn't feel like using a hand mixer so I just hand mixed the ingredients together to make these cc cookies.

Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
From allrecipes.com, adaptations are noted in parentheses

2nd Time Cinnamon Rolls

Packaged and ready to be given away to my teachers as their Christmas gift

I originally wanted to give them to my friends too, but I ran out.


I made Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls again. The last time I made them, they were sliced into 1 1/2 inch pieces. This time they were sliced into 1 inch rolls, so I was able to make many more rolls. I had extra rolls that I didn't know where to put, so I put them into cupcake liners.

Snickerdoodles

I made these snickerdoodles on a school day before winter break for my brother's English class Christmas party. It took me 2 hours to prepare, bake and clean up. I think these cookies are pretty time consuming, but they are worth it. The hardest part is rolling the dough into balls and dipping it into the cinnamon sugar mixture because it's a hassle to keep your hands clean and unsticky.

Snickerdoodles
Slightly Adapted from The America's Test Kitchen Baking Book

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! May everyone have a great Christmas and New Years. I hope you all enjoyed Christmas dinner, spending time with your family/friends/loved ones. Another year has passed so quickly, soon it will be 2011!

Warning: The rest of this post is long and may be boring...it's a recap of my day. Also, the rest of this post is jumpy because I wrote my paragraphs in random order. haha

This Christmas I didn't do anything special because my relatives were all too busy to come celebrate. However, I enjoyed Christmas day by baking the Japanese Coconut Custard and Matcha Shortbread. This day was busy, busy, busy! The phone rang more than usual, and several people came over to my house at different times. My aunt visited with her fiance and my grandpa's business partner's son and his family came over too to see my grandpa and grandma. Looking back, I realize that even if I didn't have a huge family gathering, today was still pretty eventful.


For my family, Christmas is also a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. On Christmas Eve we went to a church service. They had a skit this year that was wonderfully executed. Me and my brother certainly enjoyed watching it very much. Some parts were a bit cheesy, but that added to the enjoyment. :) To add to an already good day, my grandpa and grandma from Taiwan also came along with us. They're currently staying at my house and it's very nice to have them here with me and my family because we haven't seen them for years.

My Birthday Feast

This is one long overdue post. It's already close to the end of December and I still haven't written about all the nice things my mom, dad, uncle and aunt did for me on my birthday last month. I'm really thankful for all the thoughtful gestures that they did for me on my birthday. I was really touched and happy. My mom made my favorite dishes for dinner and my dad helped out. My aunt made some egg tarts and my uncle/aunt/cousins made a really sweet card. Here are a few pictures of the dinner...

Soda Crackers with Smoked Salmon, Cranberries, and Cream Cheese

They were really yummy. These were my mom's idea.

Sour Cream Chocolate Muffin

When I first saw these on Dodol&Mochi, I was intrigued. Her muffins looked moist and chocolaty; they also used sour cream! I think the sour cream was main reason why I made these muffins. Whenever I get sour cream, I always end up with a tiny bit left over that I don't know how to use up. So this post came out at the right time.

I would say the muffin is good. I thought that it was a bit oily though. The texture was nice and it reminded me of the chocolate muffins I made previously with the recipe from Cookie Madness. I just didn't like how oily it was because when I held the muffin and took my fingers away, I could see my fingers glistening with oil. What a contradiction right? I like to bake, but I don't like oily things. I have nothing against this recipe though. Something to take note of, my muffins look very different from Pei-Lin's muffins, so maybe it's something that I did?

Sour Cream Chocolate Muffin
Recipe from Dodol & Mochi
I made 8 muffins.


This one has a nicer dome. I don't know why, but my muffins don't look as moist as Pei-Lin's? :(

Red Bean Mochi

On Thanksgiving, I learned how to make mochi with red bean filling. Actually, I learned how to make mochi a few years ago, but I really wanted to learn from my aunt because I love eating her mochi. Guess what, her mochi does not use any oil at all, other than that used for preparing the container.

Mochi with Red Bean Filling

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake

I saw this recipe on Wendy's blog all the way back in July. I was really interested in making it for my mom's birthday, but then I changed my mind and made a sponge cake instead because my mom prefers sponge cakes over cheesecakes. I still haven't blogged about the sponge cake I made because apparently sponge cakes are not my thing.... I tried out one sponge cake recipe 2 times and it was successful on the second time. I tried another recipe once, and it majorly deflated. The texture of that cake was nice, but the cake was around 1.5 inches tall.

I decided to make this cheesecake for my own birthday instead. I was very, very worried because after my bad experience with sponge cakes, I surmised that cakes are not my thing. Especially cakes that require egg whites and egg yolks in order to make it all light and fluffy.

I made it through though!! After 2 hours spent in the kitchen mixing the batter and stuff, I accomplished mixing what seemed like a successful cake.

I ran into several problems along the way, which I will go into detail later in this post.

The cheesecake was tasty. My aunt, uncle and parents remarked that it tasted just like the one's from the Chinese bakeries. I have to agree. :) Thank you Wendy for this great recipe.

I found out that I don't really like this type of cake though. The day I made it, and I tasted it, I found out it was a bit too dense for my liking. But when I tasted it the next day, it became more delicious! So I would recommend that you refrigerate it first before serving. A warm cheesecake does not taste good, no matter how fresh from the oven it is. (That's just my opinion.) Also, my brother said that the bottom was a bit soggy, but that was because of the moisture that it got from cooling down in the pan on a really cold day. (around 57 degrees) The cake didn't taste soggy when I ate it the next day though, so I don't know.

Japanese Cotton Cheesecake
Recipe from Wendy (Table for 2...or more)

Sour Cream Pound Cake

So, I just baked my first pound cake today. (10/24/10) In fact, I am typing this post as it's baking in the oven right now.

I can't believe how it's already the end of October! Wow, then it's going to be November and then I will have to send in my college apps. These days I really wanted to bake some bread, especially some bread with matcha. However, my kitchen scale was not functioning even after I changed the batteries. Then one day I tried looking at the scale again and it worked. Whewf...I was so worried that my scale broke. It does use up batteries quite fast though.

I made this pound cake for English class because we just read the book Frankenstein, and now we have a non-fiction research project. I decided to do one on food during the Romanticism period. I discovered that pound cakes were created during the 1700s and that they are called pound cakes because of the simplicity of the ingredients. A pound of butter, sugar and butter along with some eggs would give a pound cake. Back then, most women couldn't read so just memorizing the ingredients by pounds made it much easier for them to make pound cakes.

Then I immediately thought of Von's recipe. She shared this beautiful pound cake recipe on her blog. It looked amazing! The texture was perfect and everything, so I just had to make it. I was a bit doubtful of how mine would turn out and I didn't get to try the recipe out until today because I ran out of yogurt/sour cream.

However, after making it, it wasn't that bad. I was worried mine would not turn out because I have very few successes on baking cakes. Luckily for me, the batter was pretty thick and it smelled really good. The only sad part was that there were a lot of holes in my pound cake.... it didn't look like Von's pretty, tight crumbed, yummy looking cake. I'm guessing that I might have overbeaten the eggs and incorporated extra air into the batter, causing the little holes. Please correct me if I'm wrong though.

Sour Cream/Yogurt Pound Cake
Recipe from Vondelicious who got it from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook

Thanksgiving

Today's Thanksgiving! Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Things I'm thankful for:
My family for always being there for me and bearing with me too, my friends, God, my house, my school, my material things, my blog, my blog supporters, my life. I'm pretty much thankful for everything I have because I know that I'm very lucky. Not everyone is able to have what I have. I don't need to worry about not having a place to live, no food to eat, or just any basic necessity, I have them all. I'm thankful for my dad for working so hard to support our family, my mom for doing the housework and cooking for us. My parents for being so patient with me every day, even if I'm in a bad mood. My brother for being nice occasionally and annoying most of the time. :P My aunt and uncle for being so generous and kind. My cousins for being so funny, maybe a little annoying too, but still. My best friends for always listening to me. I'm thankful for many more things too.

I'm so thankful that I started this blog. If I didn't I wouldn't have known quite a few nice bloggers too. I really appreciate everyone's niceness to me and encouragement. :) Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Photos of the turkey are going to be posted soon.

Caterpillar Bread

I have been so busy with school and college apps recently, but now it's Thanksgiving break! I plan to turn in my college apps on Friday and from then on I will be blogging much more often. Also, marching band has come to an end...forever. No more high school marching band! I'll miss it so much. However, there are some advantages of that: sleeping in one hour and having more time to do homework.

I have always wanted to try baking the savory bakery breads for lunch and I finally got around to it. (11/7) I found the recipe on Sugar & Everything Nice. Looking at the beautifully twisted hot dog bread made me want to bake this bread really much. The only problem was that I didn't have any hotdogs. Well, that problem was soon solved after I went to the market to buy some. I always knew hot dogs were bad for you, but after seeing the nutrition facts I am so shocked and disgusted. One hot dog has around 30% dv of fat! That's terrible, however, moderation is key.

I was able to make this bread while overcoming a few minor problems. One of them was the temperature in my house was too cold. I thought I killed the yeast because the dough hadn't risen even after 1 hour. With the dough, I made 8 big buns instead of the suggested 22. They turned out as big as my hand. In terms of texture, they were really good fresh from the oven. However, after freezing it, you can't just unfreeze it and eat it, you have to rebake it in order to get a good texture, otherwise the bread will taste really dry and icky. (I think this is the case with all bread, but still.) I thought the bread was a bit too salty, so next time I will adjust the salt content. Everything else was fine I think.

Caterpillar Bread
Recipe adapted from Sugar&Everything Nice.
I made 8 pieces of bread.

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes

I finally decided on which camera to get! I kept my Nikon L22. It's working out pretty nicely.

I made these cupcakes yesterday (10/29/10) and they were really easy to make. At first, I was a bit confused about the instructions because the instructions said to whisk liquid into flour ingredients, I wasn't sure if we were supposed to pour the whole thing in the large bowl and whisk or add a steady stream of liquid while mixing.

The problems I encountered during the process of making this cupcake was I lost count of how many 1/4 cups of cocoa powder I had added in. I seem to be pretty absentminded these days! I couldn't even remember if I had put 2 or 3 quarter cups. As a result, I just had to end up kind of guessing how many cups I had put in the mixing bowl.

The batter wasn't as runny as I thought it was going to be. The cupcakes baked on the top rack rise higher than the ones baked on the lower rack. After they have baked for half of the required time, the middle of the cupcake might look like it's sunken, but if you wait until the timer goes off, they will be fine or a bit flat, depending on the rack you bake the cupcakes on.

The cupcakes were moist and they had a very loose texture. Soft and not too sweet.

Easy Chocolate Cupcakes
Recipe from Baking Bites

3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa (I forgot how much I used)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 1/2 cups white sugar (I used 1 1/3 cups sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs
3/4 cup water
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/3 cup vegetable oil or melted butter (I used vegetable oil, it made life so much easier)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup mini chocolate chips (I didn't use any)

Preheat oven to 350F. Place liners in 2-12 cup muffin tins.
In a large bowl, whisk together cocoa, flour, white sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt until thoroughly mixed.
In a medium bowl, whisk together eggs, water, buttermilk, vegetable oil and vanilla extract. Whisk into flour mixture until all of the ingredients are mixed in and no streaks of flour remain. Add in optional mini chocolate chips, if using.
So basically I just added a little bit of the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and started mixing, then I realized it's ok if I poured the whole thing into the large bowl and continue whisking then. So yea, I ended up pouring the entire contents of the medium bowl into the large bowl instead of whisking in little by little. I'm not always the best at interpreting instructions so maybe I just over thought it.
Fill muffin cups evenly with the prepared batter.
Bake at 350F for 15 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of a cupcake comes out clean, or with only a few crumbs.
Remove cupcakes from the pan and cool completely on a wire rack before frosting.


I made my thin and crispy cc cookies again. Actually, I made both of these things for a band comp that was the next day.


A close up pic.


One of the cupcakes that was baked on the higher rack.

Black Bottom Cupcakes II

After debating for quite a while about what to make today, I decided to make these black bottom cupcakes. I found the recipe for these cupcakes on Brown Eyed Baker, who got the recipe from David Lebovitz.

I actually made these for my brother because it's his turn to bring snacks for Bible drill, a church activity that he participates in. Bible drill is when people memorize Bible verses and then they try to flip to that verse as fast as possible, under 7 seconds. Anyway, he initially requested that I make red velvet cupcakes...but I was too lazy. Last time I made red velvet cupcakes, they took me two whole hours, including cleaning up. In the end, I decided that I wanted to try out this recipe because the last time I made black bottom cupcakes, they took forever to bake and did not turn out the way I wanted them to. By that, I mean that they made me really worried when they were still uncooked when the time was up.

Here's my verdict. The cake part was nice and moist. It may be dry if you peel off a chunk and let it sit there for a while before eating it, but if you leave it whole and you eat it then it is moist. It was just right in terms of sweetness, not too sweet but enough so that it was enjoyable.

For the cream cheese portion, I didn't soften it enough so there were little lumps of cream cheese. This did not adversely affect the taste, just the texture, which was not as smooth. However, the cream cheese portion was still pretty good. Interestingly, the chocolate chips melted on your tongue when you take a bite of it. Creamy and rich=very yummy. I ate a half of the cupcake and almost couldn't resist eating the rest. Serve cold because they taste better that way.

Black-Bottom Cupcakes
Recipe from David Lebovitz The Great Book of Chocolate, found on Brown Eyed Baker.
Makes 12

In a group.

For the Filling:
8 oz. cream cheese, at room temperature
1/3 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
2 oz. bittersweet chocolate, coarsely chopped (or semisweet chocolate chips which was what I used.)

For the Cupcakes:
1½ cups all-purpose flour
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar (I used dark brown; I didn't have any light brown sugar)
5 tablespoons naturally unsweetened cocoa powder (not Dutch-process)
1 teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup water
1/3 cup unflavored vegetable oil
1 tablespoon white or cider vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Make the Filling: Beat together the cream cheese, granulated sugar, and egg until smooth. Stir in chopped chocolate pieces. Set aside.

A bit clumpy.

Chocolate chips mixed in.


For the filling, instead of using coarsely chopped bittersweet chocolate, I used semisweet chocolate chips that were kind of chopped. I attempted to make the cc smaller for a few minutes, until I realized that it would be a bit hard to accomplish. In the end, I just dumped the cc in the filling.

Also, I was too lazy to get out the hand mixer so I just manually mixed the filling, so it took longer than expected. My filling was also a bit clumpy because the cream cheese was not totally at room temperature.

Make the Cupcakes:
Adjust the rack to the center of the oven and preheat to 350°F (175°C). Butter a 12-cup muffin tin, or line the tin with paper muffin cups.

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl mix together the water, oil, vinegar, and vanilla.
Flour, brown sugar, cocoa powder and baking soda.

Oil, vinegar and vanilla.

For the cupcake batter, when the instructions said to sift together the flour, brown, sugar and etc... I thought it was a bit weird. For me, the brown sugar would not fit through the sifter so I just dumped it in a large bowl. Then I proceeded to sift the flour, cocoa powder, and baking soda together. I just sprinkled the salt into the dry ingredients because I use coarse salt.

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and stir in the wet ingredients, stirring just until smooth. Stir any longer and you will over mix the batter and end up with less-than-tender cupcakes.


There was a little glare in the picture.

Divide the batter among the muffin cups. Spoon a few tablespoons of the filling into the center of each cupcake, dividing the filling evenly. This will fill the cups almost completely, which is fine.

A lot of cream cheese for each one.

Bake for 25 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown and the cupcakes feel springy when gently pressed. These moist treats will keep unrefrigerated for 2 to 3 days if stored in an airtight container.

I baked my cupcakes for 25 minutes and they were done! Yay! Also, the cupcakes did feel a bit springy when pressed down on.

Oh yea, it took me a total of one hour to mix prepare the cupcakes. I was just getting the feel of it, I'm sure that the next time I make these, it will take around 30 minutes or less.


The two leftovers from Bible Drill.

Baked Nian Gao 烤年糕

Sorry for not posting for such a long time. I did bake these past few weeks, I just have not been able to get the pictures that I took because I borrowed my Uncle's camera. Recently, some things I made are black bottom cupcakes, hotdog buns, chocolate cupcakes, thin and crispy chocolate chip cookies, Von's pound cake!, and that's about it. I'm going to post about Von's awesome pound cake soon, as soon as I get the single picture for it. I'm also going to get a new camera soon. Actually, my mom bought one for me already, but I'm not sure if that is a good model or not so I'm still deciding. I'm debating between getting a Nikon Coolpix S4000, Canon PowerShot SD1300IS or keeping the Nikon Coolpix L22. Any suggestions? My favorite color is pink, but I don't know which camera is better. I'm getting sidetracked now... anyway back to my post about nian gao. By the way, thanks for reading that super long paragraph.

My mom used to make this for our family when I was little, back in elementary school. I remember coming back from school and finding this cake in the kitchen. After seeing it there, I would always be so happy. Then after a while, she stopped making it. I just recently asked her why and she told me that she had made it so often that everyone got sick of it. I also found out that back then, everyone was making it because it was really easy to make, really cheap, and a great gift for people. A gift as in when you're visiting someone, someone's sick, etc etc. I really missed eating this cake and didn't make it until now (Oct 31). I don't know why it took so long for me to ask my mom for the recipe, but here it is. I hope you enjoy the recipe. :)

So after making it, I ate around 1/4 of the cake. Ekks, pretty scary! It was sooo good and I did not eat it for such a long time that I couldn't control myself.
The crust tastes crispy and the middle is chewy, just like mochi. So a crispy crust with the chewy inside balances everything out and makes a great "cake"! In terms of sweetness, it was just right. It was not that sweet, so if you like really sweet dessert, you might want to add a little more sugar.

Baked Nian Gao 烤年糕
Recipe from my mom's friend

1 lb glutinous rice flour
1/2 cup sugar
3 Eggs
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 1/2 -3 cups milk (Add more milk if you want it to be softer, less if you want it to be chewier. I used 2 1/2 cups milk)
1/2 stick butter, melted

Toppings: red bean paste, walnut, raisins (Optional)

Bake at 350*F for one hour.

Easy way: Dump all the ingredients in one bowl and mix together until uniform. Pour into a 9x13 pan and bake at 350*F for one hour.


What I did: Whisk together the glutinous rice flour, sugar and baking powder in a large bowl. Melt the butter and warm up some milk. Mix the butter, vanilla and some milk together and add into the large bowl. Add the rest of the milk and then add the 3 eggs. (I did this so that way the butter would not solidify due to the coldness of the milk. Of course, it would not matter if your milk was at room temperature though.)

Whisk everything together. Keep on whisking until the batter is smooth and there are no lumps. Pour batter into a oiled glass pan. I don't know how it will turn out with a metal pan, but you can try.

Bake at 350*F for one hour, so that the crust become golden brown and puffy. After that, take it out of the oven and cool or eat it while hot. :) The cake will deflate a bit, but that's normal.

Btw, you can half the recipe and bake in a smaller pan.

It deflated!


I got a few pieces.


My family ate a few. So quickly eaten! This was on the same day. Within a few hours too. Everyone missed the nian gao.
For the toppings, sprinkle raisin and walnuts into the batter if you want some.

For red bean paste, my mom said you are supposed to bake it for around 1/2 hour and then somehow spread the red bean paste onto it and then put it back into the oven to continue baking it for another 1/2 hour. My aunt's sister also made this variation before and I think what she did was put a portion of the batter inside, bake, add red bean and pour the rest of the batter on and finish baking. I'm not 100% sure though. If you feel adventurous, do try it out and tell me how it goes. Thanks :)

Serving suggestion: Cut into squares and serve. If a day or 2 passes and the cake is not finished yet, very unlikely but possible, just get the portion you want to eat and microwave for a few seconds to achieve the nice, chewy texture.

炸酱麵 Bean Paste Pork Noodles

炸酱麵 also known as zha jiang mian or bean paste pork noodles (my translation), is a dish where bean paste is used to make a sauce and cooked with minced pork. My mom also adds 豆乾 (dried tofu) that is diced into this dish, which is a childhood favorite of mine. Whenever my mom made this dish, I would eat one bowl after another until I felt like my stomach would explode. XD After a really long time of not cooking these noodles, my mom decided to make them for me on 10/9/10. I was soo happy! It was actually to celebrate the end of my SATs because I don't want to take anymore SATs after the one I just took on 10/9/10.

My mom usually cooks these noodles with hand pulled noodles bought from a supermarket, but last week she made them with regular thin noodles.





I'll share the recipe one day when my mom makes them again.

Next time, maybe I'll try making homemade noodles too with this recipe. :)

Cinnamon Rolls

I made cinnamon rolls on 10/10/10. :) So "today", I decided to make cinnamon rolls after setting my eyes on a particular recipe by Pioneer Woman. I actually wanted to make this a few weeks ago, but I didn't feel brave enough, didn't have the time, and didn't want to make something so rich.

Cinnamon Rolls
Recipe from Pioneer Woman
halved, makes around 20 rolls depending on width

Ingredients
2 cups milk
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1.8 tsp instant yeast
4 cups of flour
1/2 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt (I used a bit less)
1/2 cup butter, use enough to spread over the whole rectangle and reserve the rest for the glaze
1/8 cup cinnamon
sugar, I directly sprinkled it onto the dough

So I halved the recipe and made 17 rolls, each were 1 1/2 inches thick.

First, I scalded the 2 cups milk, 1/2 cup oil, and 1/2 cup sugar. I mixed it together on medium fire and let it cook up until just before it boiled. By then, the milk started to look a little foamy. The oil isn't supposed to meld together with the milk even after you stir it, so if you see a layer of oil don't worry.

I had to let the mixture cool for around 1 hour or so, it was pretty hot today too.

I used instant yeast, also known as bread machine yeast, instead of using active dry yeast. I only used 1.8 tsp of the instant yeast which is around 1 tsp+ 3/4 tsp+ 1/8 tsp because instant yeast is more "concentrated" than active dry yeast.

Instead of letting the yeast sit in the milk mixture for 1 minute, I just dumped the yeast into the mixture and proceeded to mix in the 4 cups of flour without waiting. I think I might have miscounted the cups of flour, but I'm not sure. I used a 1/3 cup to measure out the flour and I wasn't 100% paying attention. I stirred it until the dough just came together.

Then I set it aside for 45 minutes because something came up and I had to leave the house. I was worried that the rising time wouldn't be long enough, but I had no choice but to quickly mix in the remaining 1/2 cup of flour, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and the salt. After I quickly mixed/kneaded it in, I put it in the fridge to rise. I came back home after around 30 minutes or so and the dough was looking nice and soft. The texture of the dough actually reminded me of pretzel dough.

Then I punched the dough down a bit and started to roll it out into a 30x10 inch rectangle.

After that, I melted around a 1/2 cup of butter when the recipe called for around 1 cup, but 1 whole cup would be way too much. After it was semi melted, I commenced brushing it on the rectangle. Note: if you don't want the rolls to be too messy, don't totally melt the butter, just melt it enough so that it's semi solid but still easily spreadable and then I used a pastry brush to spread it.

Sprinkle it with sugar and cinnamon. I first added the cinnamon and then I added the sugar. Actually, it doesn't even need to be measured out. I definitely didn't use one whole cup of sugar. After that, start rolling it up from the side that is farthest away from you. Roll it up tightly and then cut the roll into 3/4-1 1/2 inch pieces. I cut them into 1 1/2 inch pieces, so I had to bake them longer than the called for time.

Put the rolls into a buttered pan and then let them rise for 20-30 minutes. I accidentally skipped that part because I wasn't looking at the original recipe, but my rolls still turned out. During the time they were baking, I was freaking out because I realized right then that I needed to let them rise when they were already baked for around 5 minutes.




Anyways, they turned out alright even though I forgot to let them rise more. I also prepared the glaze by using up the butter that came from my original 1/2 cup that I didn't use up. I added a little less than 1/4 cup of milk and a whole bunch of confectioner's sugar. I didn't measure it, I just mixed and kept adding until I got the consistency I wanted.

I baked the rolls until they were golden light in color and took them out of the oven and cooled them and poured the icing on top. Let the icing set and tada, it's done.

Review: my brother rated it a 9.5/10 which is very, very good. He said to improve it I should make them bigger. =) My dad couldn't stop eating it and I was a bit worried for his health and I felt guilty, but I just can't stop baking when I have the time.

I baked them in a 9 inch pans btw.


The texture was very good. Nice and soft. The icing was nice. Together, it tastes fantastic. It actually kind of reminded me of a donut.


More tips from:
1 Pioneer Woman
2 Bakerella

Variations:
Orange-Marmalade Rolls
Caramel Apple Sticky Buns
Chocolate Chip Cookie Sweet Rolls