Happy Easter!!!

So I was a wee bit tired of sewing and I had promised the wee ones some baked Easter goodies.

So I started by putting some dough in the bread maker to make Monkey Bubble Bread from Baked Expectations, I love this book, and I had promised myself that I would work through it from front to back, but I seem to be skipping all over the place.

I cheated with using the bread maker to mix and knead the dough but it saved me time for other things on my plate.

So into my bread maker in the following order (I have a panasonic, other breadmakers may differ)
the recipe is American so I tweaked the measurments lol!!

2 teaspoons of dried yeast I used Lowan brand
4 cups of bread making flour - though the recipes called for plain flour
4 tablespoons of sugar
1 teaspoon of salt, but I left it out as I used salted butter
1/3 cup full milk powder
1 1/4 cups of water - they used 1 1/4 cups of whole milk, but we don't drink whole milk, so I used the powder
1 egg
5 tablespoons (american) of butter - I just chucked in a blob of melted butter, salted.

When it was finished, I formed it into small balls about 1 - 1 1/2 inches abit bigger than a Ferrero Roche choclate, then dipped each into melted butter and then a mix of cinnamon and sugar.

Then I popped it all into a red tin - they used a bundt pan but I didn't have a big enough one and as it turned out my bread tin wasn't big enough either, as I had escaping balls of dough. I thought I smelt something burning, so checked the over and about 8 of the puff balls have puffed off the loaf and onto the oven racks and bottom, gave me a laugh though!! And they still tasted goooooooooooooooooooooooddd!!!

I baked it for about 20 minutes at 200 degree. You can tell I'm not a precise cook, I go with the flow.

Whilst the bread was mixing etc we made the sugar cookies. Recipe is on my blog from September last year it was a daring bakers challenge and we loved the biscuits it made, super easy recipe to remember as well. Just remember to not overbeat the butter as you want the dough firm, if you want to roll it out straight from mixing it up, which is what I do, I hate waiting. After cutting them and let me tell you the eggs on legs were a PITA to say the least, the legs keep breaking off :( I did put them in the freezer for 10 minutes before baking them for 10 minutes, turning them and swapping shelves after 5 minutes.

Iced with royal icing, very basically cause they are just going to be scoffed.

And again using the dough above I made hot cross buns of the chocolate variety - I forgot to add the chips early in the mixing process and so when I added them, they just melted, so they were chocolate spread throughout the buns.

The chocolate crosses, are just a mix of plain flour, sugar, cocoa and water mixed to a thick paste and piped on.

Still have bunny cake pops to make but that's for another post.

Oh and for those that asked Monkey bread can be made savory which is what we normally do - sundried tomatoe and feta, any antipasto that you have, garlic and herb whatever you like, I just roll the dough flat cut into odd shapes, dip in butter and sprinkle over the flavourings! I think it's called Monkey bread, as you just pull it apart rather than slice it, just like a monkey would!