Date Night

On Wednesday, December 18, Jared and I had a much-needed date night. Jared wrote his last final exam of the semester so we decided it was a good reason to celebrate!

First, we went out for dinner at Montana's and got all-you-can-eat ribs. We both ended up being too full after our first rack though so we didn't really make good use of the endless ribs we could have eaten. It was delicious, though! Mmm ribs.

After dinner, Jared and I went to the theatre to go see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. We were early, however, so we decided to play in the arcade for a while. We ended up wasting quite a bit of money trying to win some prizes but at least we had fun. 

When we finally saw the movie, it was awesome! It was quite long just as the first movie was, but I've always been a fan of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit so I definitely didn't mind. 

Hooray for an awesome date night!

Cinnamon Buns

These past couple weeks, I've had an awful hankering for some cinnamon buns. The recipe I've used in the past hasn't worked too well previously so I decided to branch out to the internet. I googled "Cinnabon Copycat Recipe" and found this gem. The result was a success! The cinnamon buns turned out great. There's nothing better than the taste and smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns.

HERE is a link for the website that I found my new go-to cinnamon bun recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

Cinnamon Bun Dough:

• 1 cup warm milk (110 defrees F/45 degrees C)
• 2 eggs, room temperature
• 1/3 cup margarine (or butter) melted
• 4 1/2 cups bread flour (all-purpose works fine too)
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

Cinnamon Bun Filling:

• 2 1/2 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
• 1/3 cup butter, softened

DIRECTIONS:

1. Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle; press start. **A bread machine is not needed to make this dough. You can also mix it in a mixer or knead it by hand. I used a bread machine and put the ingredients in the machine as they are listed in the ingredients**

2. After the dough has doubles in size, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.

3. Roll dough into a 16x21-inch rectangle. Spread dough with 1/3 cup butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough and cut into 12 rolls. Place rolls in a lightly greased 9x13 inch backing pan. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F (I adjusted the temp to 325-350 F)

4. Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes. While rolls are baking, make vanilla glaze. Drizzle glaze on warm rolls before serving. **I adjusted the cooking temperature to 325-350 degrees F for 20-25 minutes.**

Vanilla Cream Glaze (I used this instead of a cream cheese icing because I didn't have cream cheese):

• 1 heaping cup of icing sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons milk

Add sugar to bowl and stir in heavy cream and vanilla until mixture resembles a thick batter. Add milk one tablespoon at a time, stirring until smooth - about 3-5 muntues. Mixture may look lumpy at first but just continue to stir and it will come together. 

Pour over hot cinnamon buns. Devour. Buy new (bigger) pants.