cinnamon tagged posts

French toast is my choice of breakfast when I want to treat myself to something awesome. Something Amazing something great. It is one of the quickest things to put together requiring only a few ingredients that you can find almost in every standard household. Usually made with stale bread, but now I don't really wait fro bread to go stale. I just go for it. And so will you. Before we get to that though, we need to learn about its history. Origins etc. It is been a while that we felt with historic facts in this blog but, we are back to it. You missed it?

This is an old recipe I had to my first blog, long time ago... About 2 years or more. It was my first ever coffee recipe, and It was an inspiration of the moment that was a success. I will repost the recipe as it was with only a few additions and modifications, when needed. So although there is a great deal of reference to coffee as the first time, be aware that that there are a few recipes on coffee already. Also be the picture is not my own, it was a picture from the web, and I just added it temporarily here. Over the weekend I will make it again (I missed that nice flavor) and I will post complete step by step instructions. So before we start here is again a disclaimer that warns you.

As promised long time ago when I had the post about the slice of heaven, I will visit Sophie and brink you the recipe. Sophie is such a lovely person, that is no wonder why she so much loved in the office by everyone. She gave me this awesome pie a few weeks ago, as a thank you to my small contribution to her cause. Please read the details here. I asked her to let me know when she is making it, so I can visit and take pictures of recipe. She did two weeks ago, but I know find time to post the recipe...The most important part of the recipe is the dough that is the Hamentaschen Dough. A hamantash (also spelled hamentasch, homentash, homentasch, (h)umentash, pluralized with -en or -n) is a pastry in Ashkenazi Jewish cuisine recognizable for its three-cornered shape. It is eaten during the Jewish holiday of Purim. They are made with many different flavors, including prunes, nut, poppy, date, apricot, fruit preserves, chocolate, or even caramel or cheese. Hamantashen are traditionally made by rolling the dough thin, cutting it into circles (of various sizes), placing filling in the center, and folding in three sides. The dough may be a cookie dough with orange juice added, citrus zest added, or a yeast dough.

It is the fall, and even here in warm florida (well at least at the north part) it feels cold. It is the fall, and in the fall a heart and gut warming drink can do more good than any food. I am not suggesting to drink only, and don ‘t eat but I hope you get the point. So any way. To get cozy and warm let ‘s get a clue from from our friends in the north, far north that it is. New York (the state not the city) where apples are the most important crop of the year. 

Up there th...

What do you think when I say rice? I know chinese food. Some more adventurous my think indian food. But in every case it will be thought as the companion to a very hearty, saucy meal. But Rice is way more than that. Rice can be yummy and delicious on its own. All it takes is some simple techniques, some basic know-how, and will to get creative... Yes with rice. But rice is a lot more than Chinese and Indian food. Don ‘t get me wrong, I love both of Chinese (and more generally speaking oriental) and Indian food.

One of the most recognizable greek deserts is baklava. It is a layered desert with lot's of nuts and a thick sweet delicious syrup. It a staple to almost every greek restaurant and pastry shop. The history of the desert is long and it is lost in past centuries, somewhere in the middle east. The first record of a desert like such was in ancient Syria where the Assyrians at around 8th century B.C. were the first people who put together a few layers of thin bread dough, with chopped nuts in between those layers, added some honey and baked it in their primitive wood burning ovens.

Yesterday I was invited to a desert party for Valentine’s day. It was desert so I assumed (wrongfully as it was proofed) that the main thing will be chocolate, since there is all this philosophy about chocolate and love and yada, yada. Instead of repeating the same pattern I decided to make something different. I made (as you can tell from the picture) cinnamon rolls. There are a couple of reasons for that: 1) I love cinnamon (I dedicated a whole blog entry on that) and 2) there is something about the aroma of yeast that makes homes really smell like homes, nice and cozy. Good cinnamon rolls, however, although simple to make, for sure require time and careful steps. They can go from puffed to flat in matter of minutes. None of the steps requires any super talent or any excellence or even any skill for that matter. All of them though, require religious attention to the execution.

One of the most recognizable aromas is cinnamon. If you think of it is the only spice with pepper that has food named out of it, cinnamon rolls, Cinnamon Toast Crunch (cereals by General Mils), cinnamon swirl cake, apple cinnamon cake and so on... It is the only spice that has its aroma extracted and commercialized for room fragrant. It is also a spice that is very closely bonded to holidays. How many can imagine Christmas and Thanksgiving without cinnamon? Not many... I know. Not to mention all this cinnamon flavored gums. But have you ever wondered what makes cinnamon... well cinnamon? Before we get started with hard science stuff let 's see where cinnamon is coming from. Well cinnamon is native to Sri Lanka and the best cinnamon is still produced there. However the first reference to cinnamon was in the ancient China. A big difference between cinnamon and other spices that in cinnamon the flavor is not coming from the seed of a plant, but thin layers shaved of the bark of a small laurel-like tree; the (what else) cinnamon tree. The shaves are usually rolled to quills. There are two types of cinnamon you can find, the actual bark (actual skin) and thin layers that come out of the branch after the skin has been removed (picture above).