Face-Melting Apple and Cinnamon Scrolls

They will melt your face with their deliciousness!!! TRUST ME.  For this super tasty recipe you'll need to chuck the following ingredients into a bowl in no particular order:

• 3 cups of flour
• 1 egg
• 1/2 cup of sugar
• 1 and a half sachets of instant yeast (about 11g depending on how much you have per sachet. Mine were inconveniently 7g each)
• a tablespoon and a half of butter
• 3/4 cup of warm water 

Proceed to mush all the above ingredients together with your hands in the bowl until it's basically all stuck together, then transfer it to a lightly floured surface where you will need to knead it into submission aka until it's firm and no longer sticky. You may need to add a little more flour. Put the dough back into your bowl and cover tightly with cling wrap. Leave your dough-y lump to rise until it's twice it's original size (about an hour or so)

Whilst your dough is doing it's thing, roughly chop up 4-5 small peeled apples into little cubes. You won't need to cook them first for this recipe.

When your dough has doubled in size, transfer it back onto the floured surface and give it a quick re-knead before rolling it out. The pedantic people out there are going to hate me because I don't roll it to any particular size, I just roll it til it's about a 1/2 inch thick and relatively rectangular shaped (or you know, any shape) Then you'll want to be sprinkling a mixture of cinnamon and brown sugar onto the rolled out dough... It's a personal taste thing in regards to how much, the cinnamon gives it a lovely aroma and the brown sugar caramalises a little with the apples when being cooked.

It's like a giant sugar pizza!

Preheat your oven to 250 degrees. Tip your yummy apple bits onto the dough and spread them out. Then tightly roll up your dough and place your apple-dough log seam side down so it doesn't unroll when you cut it. Cut off slices about 1/2 thick. Don't worry if they unroll a bit or they don't stick, they'll cook just fine. Place your slices into a lined and lightly floured baking dish 1-2cm apart. They will rise together but they come apart easily at the end of cooking.

Brush a little milk on top of each scroll and bake for 10-15minutes or until the tops are lightly browned. If you are however unlucky and have an awful tempermental electric oven like me, bake them at a lower heat of 230 degrees for 15-20 minutes keeping a close eye on them. If you find the bottoms start to burn and the tops are still pale, take them out and test to see if one is cooked through. If so, you can cheat my placing the scrolls under a hot grill for a few minutes essentially cooking the rest of the way through and so you get a nice golden top. 

The only thing to do now (well the second aside from eating them!) is to ice these puppies! It's really simple, it's just a mix of icing sugar and water the same as you would when preparing icing for a cake. You can drizzle it over the top of each bun or you can go nuts and ice the whole thing! Totally up to you! I ice mine and sprinkle a little cinnamon on top too... I do LOVE my cinnamon!! These taste absolutely fab with saltanas thrown into the mix aswell, or some walnuts or berries! If you're really clever you could work some custard in there too somehow but I'm not sure how you'd go about that. I'm sure there is a way! Lookie... finished scrolls! YUMMMM

Little Lace Mini-bows

Start with a small rectangle (about 10 x 25cm or smaller will do!) of satin and a same sized piece of lace fabric.

With the satin facing right side up lay the lace over the top. At this stage you may want to run a topstitch around the edge to hold the lace and satin together, it makes it easier to assemble in the next steps. You won't see the stitching :o)

Fold in the two ends into the middle, then the top and bottom sides into the middle encasing all the raw edges.

Pinch the centre and glue it all in place.

Wrap the ribbon around the centre of the bow wrapping the clip to the bottom side of the bow. Add a little diamante accent to the ribbon or leave it as it is! Cute aren't they? :o) A gal can never have too many cute hair accessories right?

An insomniac's guide to night time activities

I am an involuntary night owl at times, in that I stress out, over think, become anxious and low and behold! Can't sleep. I don't usually sleep well at night as it is, I wake frequently and don't tend to be able to sleep past about 7ish in the morning but since hubby is away this week sleep seems to be too far out of reach. It's so frustrating! Because I feel like the time spent awake should be time spent doing something practical! And of course, right now, as I am indeed awake and it is 11pm at night, I am thinking of productive things to do until I'm tired enough to sleep. Aside from being HUGELY creeped out by every little noise around me (and my dogs frequently going outside to bark) I am also pretty anxious and stressed at the moment. So, I am going to share with you my list of night time activities fellow sleep-deprived individuals! I think what's stressing me out most is that I have something important to do first thing tomorrow that I am dreading more than a little..which is just peachy to top the whole situation off! But anyway... here's the list!

• Bake something! For example at the moment I am waiting for my yeast dough to rise so I can make apple and cinnamon rolls. I've never tried making my own before! I have a dinner date with a new friend tomorrow night and thought they'd make a nice winter dessert.  
• Clean the kitchen... wipe down all the surfaces, sweep the floor and give it a good mopping...which is tricky to do by candlelight when your light has decided to kick the bucket.
• Dust the loungeroom with your flourescent pink feather duster whilst singing Pink Cadillac.

• Write a blog post of things to do whilst awake!
• Put some low music on in the background to cover up those freaky little noises (I've opted for some nice Jazz thisevening!)
• Make a nice hot sweet cup of tea, when you're stressed and wide awake, a cup of tea never goes astray. Especially if you have some of that lovely 'Sleepy Time' tea. I keep forgetting to buy some! I assume valium has the same effect, or being hit over the head with a bit of 2x4 but the tea is much more pleasant.
• Get a colouring book. I have one with fairies in it. Yes I am aware that I'm 23 years old but nothing beats colouring something in! Seriously just try it.
• Plan your outfit for the next day (or the current day, if you're past the 12am mark)
• Troll the internet for things to read or watch. That's always a good one! I read some Interviews with the cast of TrueBlood, one of my guilty pleasure tv series'. Ps I watched episode 4, season 5 today... LOVED it!! Can't wait for next week!
• Do all of the above with Futurama Season 6 playing in the background.
• Find cute things to make for people at Christmas! I came across this super cute little Sloth Amigurumi crochet pattern and as my mum loves slothes I shall be making her one!
• Do your folding and ironing whilst watching David Attenborough's 'Secret Life of Birds'
• Play the Sims 3; create a Sim identical to yourself, build it a house like yours and make it stay awake doing menial tasks. Just a suggestion :p Why is it more fun to play with someone else's life than live our own sometimes? Who knows... but Sims is awesome! (to those who don't like the Sims, I don't want to hear about it! I do, so NERRRR NER NER NERR NERRR to you)
• Colour your hair, forget you coloured your hair when you eventually fall asleep then wake up looking fabulous and under the impression that fairies did it for you during the night. Of course there is always the possibility that you might wake up with a face covered in dye and splotches all over your clothes from being too tired to dye your hair the night before so maybe don't do that one.  
• Listen to some LapFoxTrax... it's like Vocaloids but different. If you don't know what I'm talking about, nevermind. If you do... how freaking awesome is it?!?! Ohh look it's now 1am! Hmm...

Well there's a list of things you can do whilst awake at night...some are productive, some are practical, some aren't but hey that's what I'm doing tonight so if it's good enough for me, I'm sure it's good enough for someone else. I do hope something on my list tickles another night-owls' fancy (wink wink haha!) but to be honest I hope you're all mentally stable people who get decent nights' sleep and don't need to be finding things to do.

Stay stress free people! I'm off to ice my buns!
Nighty night!