Sour Cream Cinnamon Roll Pancakes With Maple Coffee Glaze

What a delicious sounding title!! I love...

Sour cream- check
Cinnamon- check
Pancakes- check
Maple syrup- check
Coffee- double check

Although the pictures show that this might be easy to make, I had an awful experience that I am going to show in a series of pictures. I am going to show what each step SHOULD have looked like, and what mine looked like. I will be telling my wonderful story along the way. I hope you halfway enjoy.

I mixed the ingredients for the pancake batter in my mixer. It was thick BUT...

"The pancake batter will be nice and thick, this is good."

If you say so! Here we go.

Her pancakes are all smooth and pretty on the griddle after the batter is dropped on. Mine were big clumps that didn't spread out because the batter was so thick, so I tried to flatten them and spread them out with my spatula but the batter just stuck to it. It was messy from the get go. Then it was time to pour the cinnamon mixture onto the pancakes. I got a little excited and I guess made the hole in the bag too big :)

Yikes!!

Totally not pretty. At all. I let them cook the amount they needed and then I flipped them and THAT was not pretty either. Let me show you...

I have no explanation as to how they got this way. They just exploded!! Husband told me to trim the excess off, so I did and that salvaged the look a little bit. Upon turning them over, I was expecting to see the semi descent cinnamon "clumps" (so much for swirls). Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. This is what I got...

Impressive

I was so sad that her pancakes looked a million times better than mine. I stood there and thought of ways that I could fix this for round 2.

1- Try a little bit smaller scoop of batter
2- Cut a much smaller hole in the cinnamon bag
3- Pray for a miracle

I will let you be the judge for round 2...

As you can see, I started giving up towards the end

Another fail

Sad day. My hopes for this recipe came crashing down into a huge ball of cinnamon fury. I told Husband that I might have to cook another breakfast Pinterest recipe. He said "Let's just try them." so I piled them on a plate, added the maple glaze and we dug in.

SOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!!!

I may have butchered the way it was supposed to look but holy lord they tasted delicious!! After about 10 minutes, I got a pretty bad tummy ache though. I'm sure it was because of all the sugar. But it was worth it. The batter recipe is to die for so I will be making these again. Better luck next time.

Check it out for yourself...

http://www.number-2-pencil.com/2012/06/25/sour-cream-cinnamon-roll-pancakes-with/

Pumpkin Cupcakes With Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Alas!! The day came where I finally decided that I would put all my cooking experience to the test and create my own recipe.

Of course I chose a dessert. Who wouldn't.

I have baked A LOT of cupcakes, cakes and cookies over the years. I thought I had an idea of what it would take to create a cupcake of my own. I pulled some ingredients I knew would be necessary.

Without going into great detail, I'll just mention what I used

3 c. flour
1 package vanilla pudding mix (I had it, why not try it?)
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tbsp. cinnamon (oh yeah)
1/2 tsp. allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves

This mixture looked sufficient and smelled delicious so I was satisfied. On to the wet ingredients...

1 c. butter
3/4 c. honey (I decided to use this instead of sugar, read it was a great alternative)
1 c. brown sugar
3 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 c. pumpkin puree

I started with the wet ingredients in my handy dandy mixer (that I LOOOOOVE, thanks mom!). After mixing a while, the contents looked like puke. Much like the pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies I made. I slowly added the dry ingredients and the smell was just uuuuuuuh-mazing. The mixture looked to be the perfect consistency and I was getting extremely proud of myself. I poured the mixture into the cupcake pan and baked them at 350 for 25 minutes.

In the meantime, I made the frosting. I decided to go with cream cheese frosting.

4 oz. cream cheese
4 oz. butter
2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tbsp. cinnamon (oh yeah)

The frosting was the bomb before it even went on the cupcakes. I would have eaten it all with a spoon.

NOW FOR THE VERDICT (dun, dun, dun...)

Not bad!!! The cupcakes had KIND OF a weird density, I can't really place why. The taste was 95% delicious, there was just a tiny bitter taste afterwards. Again, don't know why. But the frosting, oh muh guw, sooooo good.

I plan on making these again but I am going to change a few things. I am going to add 1 more c. of flour, 1/2 tbsp. less of cinnamon (dang), only do 1/2 c. honey and add 1/4 c. sugar.

Hopefully that will get me the perfect cupcake but I have no clue if it really will. If you have any suggestions, please share them!

Chicken Taco Casserole

I made this soooooooo long ago so I don't know why it's taken me so long to get around to blogging about it.

I really don't remember if I screwed anything up with this one. Yet I do remember that it was very good and is a keeper in my recipe book.

So I do recommend this if you are in a mexican food kind of mood!

http://www.bhg.com/recipe/chicken-taco-casserole/

Cheesy Potato Gratin

Let me start with something that really chapped my hiney with this recipe...

I spent $10 on the fancy cheese!! $10 on cheese alone. I'm thinking "this better be the best freaking potato recipe in the history of potato recipe making." At the same time, I thought that since this is a Williams Sonoma recipe, then of COURSE it's going to be good.

Shall I start at the beginning?

So I was following directions (for a change) and was doing just fine. I got the butter in, the shallot, flour, chicken stock, cream and now it was time for the cheese.

Expensive cheese #1- Gruyere, imported from Italy (ooooooooooooh)

I started grating it with my awesome saladmaster grater and as I was going along, I grabbed a chunk to throw in my mouth, out of habit. You know in the movies when the wife is all cute in her apron, dancing, looking all suave while cooking dinner and putting this and that in her mouth? I was going for that effect (minus the apron, dancing and looking suave). Regardless, I popped some cheese in my mouth and immediately paused where I was.

What      


the      


crap    


 is      


that        


taste?!??!

I literally tasted the smell of dirty feet. I pulled the cheese out of my mouth, swished the taste around and again and confirmed that this cheese tasted like smelly feet. I took a big whiff and about gagged at the rancidity of the smell. This was supposed to be FANCY cheese?! Gag. But I continued, just without any more taste tests.

I continued following directions and then added the second fancy cheese, which wasn't as rancid as the first, but wasn't amazing. I had a nightmare experience with this cheese before so I bought pre-shredded.

Which really makes me question, if this cheese is not that great, WHY is it so expensive?

ANYWAY, the potatoes got cooked according to the directions. And you know the verdict? Not that fancy. Husband said "I don't see what the big deal is" and I agreed. They tasted like potatoes. Totally not worth $10 worth of cheese.

Especially not worth the shock of putting dirty feet in my mouth. Not at all.

Ew
http://www.williams-sonoma.com/recipe/cheesy-potato-gratin.html

Chicken Enchilada Casserole

Husband had been demanding some kind of mexican casserole for a while so I caved and decided to make this one.

A quote from this chef: "Sometimes the dinners I make aren't really pretty but taste really good."

Also: "It's not the prettiest dinner you'll ever eat, but it sure it tasty."

Two ways of saying something that is so true. This dinner was very tasty but as soon as I dipped the spatula in to get a piece, everything just disintegrated into a pile of mush. So we had very good mush for dinner.

Normally, I don't like cooked avocados but they added a nice flavor kick. Would I recommend this one? YOU BET!!

http://www.iwashyoudry.com/2012/08/01/chicken-enchilada-casserole-recipe/

Taking Suggestions

Are there any Pinterest recipes you would like me to try out for you so you don't have to do the dirty work?

If you want me to do a test run, just comment with the link to the recipe!! This could be fun :)