Coffee Cake Sugar-splosion

Holy sweetness.  Finally tried a recipe for one-dish coffee cake last weekend that I've had stashed away for years...it's a yeast cake (and you all know my struggles with the yeasty arts), but super simple (mama likey).
It turned out just fine...just way, way too sweet (and you all know that means it's a buttload of sugar, considering my epic sweet tooth...it was so sweet you couldn't even taste the cake-y part.  Sad.).  If I make it again I would cut the amount of cinnamon-brown sugar topping and powdered-sugar icing down by half and add nuts for some crunch.

That's a whole lot of sugar right there folks.

Finished product = diabetic coma!

Oh Snap!

Annnnd...after a much-too-long hiatus, I'm back!!  And the heavens rejoiced (or something...)
I'm hosting Easter dinner today so I figured it was the perfect time to get back into my food blog...I'll save the full shebang for tomorrow but here's a quick preview of what I worked on yesterday.

Another epic battle with yeast!  But I'm pretty sure I'm kicking its ass.  I made braided egg bread and kolaches (cherry and apricot...attempting to recreate the delicious ones from my childhood - the amazing cooks used to make homemade kolaches in our school cafeteria every so often, delicious!)  I dropped one pan on the floor after the second rising, luckily there were only 5 casualties otherwise I'm pretty sure I would have thrown a tantrum on the floor like my 2.5 year old does.

Hard at work on kolaches:


And, some before-and-after of the final products:

Easter is delightful.  Life is good :)

First Pizza

Well, my dreams of soft, chewy, fluffy homemade pizza crust went up in hard crunchy thin-crust smoke, as my dough barely rose at all. Probably b/c the yeast I used was expired by about 6 months but I thought it would still work...fail. It was still pretty tasty, but unfortunately not all I had hoped for by any means! Baby enjoyed her first taste of pizza though, so that was fun.

Crust recipe: New BH&G. Used about 3/4 c. of whole wheat flour out of 3-1/4 total.
Toppings: Pepperoni, Italian sausage, onions, diced tomatoes, mozzarella & cheddar cheeses.