Yet More Food

I'm still playing with bread. Earlier this week I made my best loaf yet of "sarah in nyc"'s peasant bread, and yesterday as I was driving home from work I suddenly got the idea to see if the universal bread recipe would make cinnamon rolls. It did. I followed the amount of sugar recommended for sweet doughs, I used milk for the liquid, and I added some butter for the (optional) fat, to make the bread softer. After the first rise, I rolled the dough out into a big rectangle, spread it with 3 Tbsp of softened (nearly melted) butter, and then shook on a mixture of brown sugar (close to a cup, but not packed down) and 4 tsp of cinnamon. I rolled the whole thing up long-ways, sliced it into twelve more or less equal pieces, plus a wonky bit off each end, and then put all the pieces into butter-sprayed baking tins to rise again. After baking, I iced them while they were still warm.

For the icing, I had some sweetened condensed milk leftover from something else and I didn't want it to go to waste, so I melted it together in a small skillet with two capfuls of vanilla flavoring until it started to thicken up. This was surprisingly yummy in a diabetes-inducing way, but only yielded enough icing for a third of the rolls, so I had to make a sugar glaze for the rest.

UP and I had a couple each, and the rest have been given away. My mother pronounced them as "like Cinnabon", so I guess they were a success. Besides which the whole house had a warm, sugary smell by the time they were pulled from the oven.


UP's mother used to serve French onion soup (originally with homemade, later with Campbell's) by putting a thick piece of French bread covered with a slice of Swiss cheese in the bowl before she poured the soup over it. Occasionally UP will get a hankering for this, so I make it maybe once or twice a year. Recently I made a slight twist on this by using thin sliced French bread to make grilled sandwiches. I scooped some onions from the warmed up soup with a slotted spoon and added them to the Swiss cheese in the sandwich. Then, even though I was using a non-stick surface, I added butter to the surface and sprinkled Italian seasoning into the butter so the spices would stick to the bread as the sandwich toasted. Obviously meals don't come any quicker and easier than grilled cheese and canned soup, but this was tastier than the usual grilled cheddar and tomato or vegetable soup. UP said that he definitely wanted to have the same meal again.