5/31/2014

Recipe: Baked Cronuts Two Ways. Filled with sweetened marscarpone and topped with a lemon glaze, or decorated with marzipan crumbles and bing cherries

Hi everyone! Alexandra and I are very excited to share our new recipe for baked cronuts today! Truth be told, neither of us have had the opportunity to try an actual cronut. They sound amazing but as if a regular fried piece of dough wasn't bad enough, adding a million layers of butter inside sounds like overkill. 
But the idea of a tender, flaky piece of baked puff pastry dressed up like a donut sounded just right, especially if it incorporated some seasonal fruit, and so our baked cronuts were born! You can make either of the two flavors, but we found our favorite was stuffing everything into one huge, hard-to-eat monstrosity of awesomeness. There's no photos of that scene, but you get the idea...



 First, assemble your ingredients:
1 package Dufour Classic Puff Pastry (one sheet will make about 12 cronuts)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1 roll of marzipan, finely chopped into crumbles
A pint of ripe cherries, pitted and cut into eighths
8 oz. tub of marscarpone cheese
1 cup plus 2 tbsp powdered sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
2 tbsp milk
Tiny bit of flour for keeping pastry from sticking
Sprinkles!

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees. Allow your sheet of puff pastry to thaw completely before unfolding it onto a sheet of parchment paper sprinkled with a little flour, then use small and large cookie cutters to cut out your donut shapes. We used a cute scalloped one, but round, or even hearts or squares, would be cute too. We also saved our scraps and baked them up separately to munch on later with leftover glaze and toppings!

Transfer your sheet of parchment to a cookie sheet and spread the rings out. Brush each one generously with melted butter. Bake in the preheated oven for 15-18 minutes, until firm to the touch and nicely browned. If they deflate as they cool then they need to be baked a teensy bit longer.

While they're baking you can whip up the glazes, fillings, and toppings. If you want to make the lemon glazed version, start by combining the tub of marzipan with two tablespoons of powdered sugar. When they're well mixed, spoon it into a baggie and clip the corner for piping, or use a pastry bag fitted with a large round tip.

When your baked cronuts have cooled, slice them in half very carefully with a good serrated knife. Use a sawing motion without applying too much pressure to keep them from crumbling. Pipe a generous amount of the sweetened marscarpone filling into the bottom half of the pastry.

 To make the lemon glaze, combine 1/2 a cup powdered sugar with the zest and juice of a lemon, adding the juice slowly while stirring until the glaze is relatively runny. If the juice wasn't quite enough liquid to make the glaze thin, add a tiny bit of milk to achieve the right consistency. Dip the top half of the cronut into the glaze and sandwich it with the filled bottom half and immediately apply your sprinkles so they stick:


If you want to make the cherry and marzipan version, make a plain glaze by combining the remaining 1/2 cup powdered sugar with a tiny bit of lemon juice and about a tablespoon of milk to achieve a runny consistency. Dip the top of a whole baked cronut into the glaze and top with the cherry slices and crumbled marzipan and enjoy! And if you want to be truly decadent, stuff a glazed cronut with the cherries, marzipan, and marscarpone all together and chow down... You know you want to.

5/12/2014

Shop Update: Herb and Spice Trivets, Vintage Button Art Pieces, and DIY Yarn Bombing Kits!

There's a ton of new cute items up for sale in my Etsy shop this week! These herb and spice filled trivets, which I talked about making for a craft fair, are finally listed in the shop!

As are these wonderful vintage button art pieces I made. I've been collecting vintage buttons my entire life and I'm so happy to have these special ones out of the jars and on display! The one in the top middle is sold, and the center one is mine, but the rest are in the shop waiting for new homes! I've also listed a framing option for them if you want yours to arrive nicely framed!

And lastly, I've created a new version of my Yarn Bombing Kit that comes without a knitted piece included, for those of you who want to make your own and ship it off to a friend!

Happy shopping! ^_^

5/07/2014

Finished Object: The Never-Ending Seed Stitch Wrap. I've been knitting this since September, but it came out so lovely! Plus a bonus tiny baby hat made from the scraps!

It's finally done! Coming in at a whopping 24" x 72" and using over 1600 yards of Lily Sugar'n Cream worsted weight cotton yarn, it's my most ambitious knitting project to date. I knit a sweater once in a single month. This monster took me about 9 months, working on it in the evenings here and there when I could. I'm completely in love with it! It's hefty and squishy and thanks to the fact that it's entirely seed stitch I didn't even have to block it.


I started making it because some time soon we hope to get a small flock of chickens for the backyard, and I wanted a nice wrap to wear while I sit on the swing and let them roam around for a couple hours each day. I needed something that would hit at the elbow so I could knit while wearing it and this came out just perfect!

I used this pattern from the Purl Bee blog, cast on the 109 stitches with my size 8 vintage straight needles, and used all the balls of Sugar'n Cream I had in my stash plus a couple more coordinating shades. I decided I would just knit till the ball ran out and that's how I got the wonky stripes. Possibly my favorite thing about my version is that, while Purl's version was made with a different, very expensive cashmere yarn, mine cost about $20 in yarn. I didn't want it to take forever and cost a fortune, it had to be one or the other for me.

When I was done I had mostly tiny scraps of all the colors left, but I knit from a big cone of the cream, so I decided to make a baby hat to match the wrap. I can see it turning into a nursing cover in the future and I thought having a little hat to match would be too cute!

I used a pattern that I found on Ravelry, but I feel like I ended up with a few too many straight rows. If I could do it over I'd remove the first stripe of cream stockinette altogether and start with the blue stripe right after the seed stitch brim so it would be a little shorter. But I really love it all the same, and I may try blocking it a bit but rolling the brim is also an option. Into the hope chest it goes! And into my cuddly wrap I go...