As you may have realized by now I spend a lot of time experimenting in the kitchen and I love to share the prototypes with my family.... Especially my PaPa whom I went to visit for a mini-family gathering a couple of weeks ago. In my family there's a long history of summer camp participation. There's a camp in Michigan that my fam has been going to since my mom was a kid... and all her kids went... and now her kids' kids are going. Additionally, I come from a hard working family and summer has always been when kids get to spend quality time with relatives. This is also a great way to save on childcare during the summer. The fact that your kids get to commune with the older generations of their family, cousins, and such is an added super non-financial bonus! Thus, (to make a back story short), my family gathered for these reasons at my PaPa's condo. The cast of characters included:

* My twin
*Her son
*My elder sister
*Her son and daughter
*My mom
*My PaPa
*My Aunt
*Her 2 daughters

With all those mouths in on 3 bedroom condo I thought it'd be a good idea to bring a sweet treat. A while ago I bought Fine Cooking's Sweet Cakes magazine. I took this opportunity to take a closer look at the recipes I'd tabbed and pick on to bake. I settled on their super easy cinnamon rolls... The perk? No yeast! Have I shared my fear of yeast? I dunno why but I always feel like I'll muck it up. There's something about the "live" descriptor that gets me. I figured this Fine Cooking recipe would be a great way to make a crowd pleaser without having a dry yeast panic attack on my part.

FASTEST EVER CINNAMON BUNS

For the dough
3/4 c cottage cheese
1/3c buttermilk
1/4c sugar
2 oz. unsalted butter, melted
1 tsp. vanilla
2c flour (more for rolling)
1 Tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking soda

For the filling
3/4 oz. unsalted butter, melted
2/3c (packed) brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground allspice
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1c chopped pecans

For the glaze
2 1/2 oz. powdered sugar
2-3 Tbs. cold milk
1 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 400, grease the sides and bottom of a springform pan (or just a regular ol' cake pan if your me).

So the recipe itself calls for making the dough in a food processor which is what's supposed to make it so easy. I didn't have a food processor until recently (thanks Mom!) I gave it a whirl with a good ol' wooden spoon. I ran into some challenges... the dough wasn't completely smooth because I wasn't able to break up all the cottage cheese curds. Also the dough wasn't as dense as it should have been which made it delicate and hard to handle. In the end I thought I was going to have to botch the whole batch of buns (alliteration shout out!) because the dough wasn't stiff enough to roll. So prior to tucking my tail in shame and sneaking to the trash can I cut the misshapen log into pieces and then re-rolled each individual bun.... I also iced the buns twice, once immediately after baking, and then another time once the buns had cooled. The initial icing was absorbed into the buns and I felt that I needed another coat to make them look delicious AND be sweetly topped. The end results were pretty tasty- even if I didn't end up with the 12 buns the recipe should have made.









Cheese curds, buttermilk, & sugar















Adding in the dry stuff
















Getting a little knead-y















Iced and on a plate














Yummie!

Ok.... so I must confess the obvious and then get a little self righteous about it before we get to the fun part of this post. I, dear friends, neatly fit a stereotype. I am a fat girl who loves cake. More specifically I love chocolate cake. A double stereotype for sure with all running associations between women/chocolate and fat people/food. Now mind you I am just using the word fat as a factual descriptor. You can try to be nice all you want about it with euphemisms (zaftig, rubenesque, thick, curvy, etc.) but it all boils down to the an avoidance of the dreaded F-word. So I'm claiming it in on my own terms, lovin' it, and this chocolate cake recipe I pulled from Fine Cooking. The secret? MAYO!!!! I don't even like mayo... but I guess I'll have to amend that blanket statement now to be "I don't like mayo except when it's used to bring exceptional moistness to chocolate cakes." How's that for a mouthful? Speaking of which check out this photo journal of chocolate decadence:







Dry stuff, you know, the usual... flour, cocoa powder, salt, baking powder, baking soda....












Mmmmm.... creaming ingredients (butter, sugar, buttermilk, eggs) are tasty!












It's simple math: Part A + Part B = C (C cake!).
















Action shot!









So post baking I let the two cakes cool at room temperature. Then I used tom baking tips I've picked up along the way to make it a bit easier to assemble. I made sure to ensure the cakes released easily from the pans by lining them with parchment paper on the bottom. After releasing the cakes from the pans I wrapped them in plastic wrap and them sealed them in a freezer bag. I put them in the freezer to firm up and be easier to cut into layers later on. After about 30 min. in the freezer I leveled both cakes and then split eat one into two layers. I then pulled out my ganache and attempted to do a crumb coat to make sure the cake looked sexy sweet upon completion. However, the summer weather had different plans.... Due to my frugality and the heat (I try not to turn on my window AC unit if at all possible) the ganache wouldn't keep its proper consistency and kept melting. After turning on my AC and trying my darndest (i.e. putting the ganache in the freezer to firm up between layer frosting, keeping the cake in the fridge once it was crumb coated) I decided it was not ganache weather. So I added a bit more chocolate and some confectioner's sugar to turn it into frosting. That switch did the trick and my cake was frosted firm and ready to eat!