The Tragedy of the Caramel Apple Sticky Buns

Those words should not even be strung together with "tragedy" out front, but alas, such is the case.

I tried to make these glorious sticky buns the other day and it was pretty much a great and terrible disaster. I got the recipe from The Pioneer Woman and I don't know why her creations were so beautiful and mine were so terrible.

Actually, I do know why. I tried to cram way too many delicious little fat, fluffy rolls into too few pans. So then they were just sad. I baked them as instructed and the ones in the center were totally doughy and raw--not even a little bit cooked--and then when I popped them back in the oven they all got sort of charred and scorched and the caramel burned and the apples were all brown and dry and all in all, it was not one of my more successful ventures.

But I will not be thwarted! Well, not for eternity, anyway. When I'm brave enough I'll try them again. But with some changes:

1. You know the rolls are going to get real fat. Prepare for that. Maybe you won't get to have the buns in a nice circle shape like the PW because you do not own nearly enough cake pans to make that happen. So give them more room to live! I imagine more space will also prevent the innermost rolls from being too insulated, so they can actually bake. It's hard to say.

2. Any time you're going to be baking with caramel in the bottom of the pan, do yourself a favor, and line the pan with foil first. Everyone will be happier that way. (I usually line the pan with foil when I do cinnamon rolls because it makes the cleanup suck so much less, but for some reason I didn't think that through with these puppies. Even though the recipe has you pour the caramel DIRECTLY ONTO THE PAN. Sometimes, I am not as smart as I like to think I am.)

3. Give the sticky buns a chance to cool a little before you turn them upside-down. The caramel ran straight all over every surface it could find because I think I flipped them way too soon (but I wanted to eat them so bad!) and the caramel sauce didn't have a chance to thicken. So give the babies some time to congeal. The rolls will still be warm, and the caramel will stick be sticky, even after waiting a bit, I bet, so it will still be able to drizzle and cascade over the rolls.

So. Now we know. Or at least, now I hope I am better armed for when I go about this in the future.

Because seriously. Who doesn't want these in their mouth?

Pioneer Woman, you are a cruel mistress.

Chicken Alfredo (and rolls!)

From Mommy Hates Cooking.

Pictures to come. I used rainbow noodles because I could. And because that's all we had. I served it with the most yummy rolls the world has ever seen. Or eaten. But we'll do that part next.

1 lb spiral pasta
3 chicken breast, cooked and cubed (the original recipe calls for two, but I did three)
1 8oz block of cream cheese, softened
1 tbsp butter
1 cup milk
1 cup grated parmesan cheese (I just used the kind you buy in the shaker thing at the store. I didn't measure it or anything. I just used however much I thought would be delicious)
Garlic salt to taste (which obviously means, again, however much is delicious, which also means A LOT)
Parsley flakes (uh, this time around I forgot the parsley, so...you don't HAVE to use it)

1. Cook the pasta as instructed on the package, drain, and leave in the strainer for now. 
2. In the warmed up stock pot--and it's easier if you use a stock pot. I did a skillet before, and there wasn't nearly enough room to work in. In the warmed up stock pot you cooked the noodles in, add the cream cheese, butter, milk, and parmesan. Keep the heat on medium and whisk that goodness together with a gravy whisk until it's silky and delicious. 
3. Add garlic salt. I like to add it to the sauce itself because if I don't, I'll forget it. Because by the time we're done with the next step I'm ready to move on directly to EATING. 
4. Add in the drained pasta, and the chicken, and stir it all up so everything's coated in yummy sauce. 
5. Serve!

I found my sauce didn't quite coat everything like I wanted it to, so next time, I'd probably add another half cup of milk to thin out the sauce and stretch it a little farther. I did add a whole other chicken breast, so I'm assuming that was part of the disparity.

And you have chicken alfredo! And it wasn't even very hard to make! I mean, if I could make it, a monkey probably could. Which means you definitely could.

Oh, and the bread! I try to make rolls whenever I'm also making a main dinner dish. Because if there's anything in this world I love, it's bread. In fact, I think I'll probably go get one of those bad boys and eat it right now while I'm blogging about them.

This recipe came from my sister-in-law who somehow knows how to make the most delicious breads in the world. She does the best cinnamon rolls (like, we're talking Cinnabon cinnamon rolls), and apparently has an intimate knowledge of the workings of Crazy Bread.

So, Crazy Bread. Here goes the beginning of the rest of your life.

2 cups warm water
2 tbsp yeast
1/3 cup sugar
3 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening
2 eggs
6 cups flour

1. 
   
2. If you have one, you definitely want to use a stand mixer for this because I recently tried to do this recipe by hand and it was way hard. Or, I would recommend halfing the recipe if you're going to do it by hand. Put water, yeast, and sugar in your mixing bowl and let sit for a few minutes until it gets sort of bubbly and fluffy. 
3. Add salt, shortening, eggs, and two cups of your flour. Mix until it's all blended and soupy. You'll want to scrape the sides of the bowl with a spatula after this, to make sure all your flour gets mixed in. 
4. Add remaining flour and knead for 5 minutes. Sometimes the dough is still kind of sticky after this, so you can add more flour, or you can just deal with it. I usually just deal with it. 
5. Let rise for twenty minutes. 
6. Here's where it gets fun. You can do pretty much whatever you want with this dough after you're done--breadsticks, pizza dough, crescent rolls, whatever. I like to cram twelve little rolled-up balls into a 13x9 in pan. This way, they're extremely large and they get all squished up and they're delicious. It also takes them a long time to bake, so be prepared for that. 
7. Allegedly, you can bake them at 400 degrees for twelve minutes. But my oven's way too hot so I usually do them at 350 degrees for ten minutes. To cram a dozen of them into one pan, you'll want to cook them longer and at a lower temperature. I probably did them for more than fifteen minutes, but after the initial ten minutes, I lowered the temperature of the oven to about 325 because I really didn't want them to burn. 

So...good luck with that. But apart from weird baking issues, and discrepancies in timing, they're really easy to make. And hardly have to rise.