16 Gorilla bread rolls ='.'=

Baked in a toaster oven @ 300 degrees.


Good morning Blogging world! 
This post is dedicated to my wonderful, beautiful, sweet, one-of-a-kind, God-blessed-me with Mommy, whom I inherited the love of cooking, baking, sewing, & so many other nifty things (& my Daddy's mom, Lola Lydia, she loved to cook , sew & make desserts too- we miss you Lola). 

Mommy & I & foooood


But since my parents moved to Seattle, WA this is a great way to show them how to prepare and bake Gorilla Bread for one of their potluck parties. It's so hard to communicate this recipe via cell phone or by listing the ingredients and expect it to look like the picture above. They are such party animals- hahahaha, nah not really, but they do get invited to many parties & attend often with dish in hand. Now you too can bake this for one of your parties this Labor Day Weekend.



 FYI: Gorilla Bread is Monkey Bread stuffed with cream cheese. You can find other recipes on

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/gorilla-bread-recipe/index.html

Let's get started, (warning: there will be tons of step by step photos :D)

Ingredients:

• wax/parchment paper (or you can generously spray the pan with PAM)
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 tablespoon cinnamon
• 16 Pillsbury Crescent canned refrigerator rolls (2 tubes/cans to equal 16 rolls)
• 4 ounces cream cheese, cut into 16 cubes (tip: freeze before cutting)
• 1/2 stick butter, melted
• 1/2 cup brown sugar
• 3/4 cups walnuts (or pecans) chopped

Procedure:

Line baking 8-9 inch baking pan. Place 1/2 cup nuts on the bottom of the pan. Preheat toaster 

oven to 300 degrees F, if using a regular oven preheat & bake at 350.

Combine sugar and cinnamon.

Melt the 1/2 stick of butter in a saucepan and add brown sugar and bring to a boil then add half of the walnuts; remove from heat.

 Unroll Crescents. Onto a SILPAT (or onto a plastic/Saran wrapped plate) this will prevent the rolls from sticking to the plate).

 Sprinkle cinnamon and sugar mixture onto each crescent.

 Place 8 cubes of cream cheese and roll like a log (cinnamon roll). 

Cut each roll evenly into 4 pieces (eventually will have a total of 16).  

Place the rolls in the pan (pan should have room so that the bread can double or more in size).

 Spoon the butter/brown sugar/walnut mixture on top. 

Cover pan with a foil to prevent burning.

Bake for about 30 minutes, then an additional 5 minutes uncovered. Invert onto a plate/remove rolls from the pan while it's still hot to avoid sticking to the pan or to the parchment paper.

 ~Njoy & Indulge! Have a wonderful Labor Day Weekend & "Magingat lahat kayo" (as Mommy would say to all her little children)!    ='.'=

She posed for a picture with this & of course surprised me with one (taken by SIL-Marianne). She's wonderful! I love you MOMMY!

Hubby's Birthday Month ='.'=

I've been married for a decade now this year. So I would like to introduce my better half in ICE CREAM CAKE form. He loves The San Diego SUPER Chargers, Ice Cream, Vanilla Pound Cake, & Hello Kitty (I mean ME) so this is what I came up with.

I used Wilton Cookie Cutters for the football & helmet (http://www.artofdessert.blogspot.com/ inspired this), Cricut Cake for the Hello Kitty. Circle Cutters in different sizes for his name plaque & Charger Bolt (cut slits & lighting-bolt effect using a paring knife).

Before slicing the cake, Andretti took a bite out of HK's poor head. He even placed it back on the cake just to make me cry.  :`C   What a meanie, but since it was his birthday & it was his cake, he can do "whateva" he wanted.  If you read http://maedbymaggie.blogspot.com/2011/09/foam-please.html  then you know exactly what that meant.

Slicing the cake was the HARD part. It was frozen solid. Bwahahaha (in my cynical laugh)!!! We had to dip the knife in very hot water multiple times. After a grueling five minutes and a lot of sweat and impatience appears two layers of plain vanilla pound cake. Plain-of course not, I added food coloring to make it rainbow & colorful.

AND...

My son, Ayden, my sou chef, the strawberry crazed kid picked strawberry ice cream to sandwich the layers together. I frosted the cake with my secret combo of Cool Whip & buttercream icing to finish & dazzle the frozen cake. Maybe I'll share that in a future post. Tee hee!

Rainbow Vanilla Pound Cake, just toooooo cute, even the husband was surprised.

It doesn't look too appetizing in this photo.

Looks more like melted crayons (I use to melt crayons & almost burned the house down... let's not get into too much details about that & I hope mom & dad or Kuya doesn't read this one. LOL!)

Too bad we couldn't add the candles, the hard as a rock, frozen solid layers would not allow for it. & since this cake was last year's cake. Does anyone have any suggestions for his upcoming birthday? I give you 5 days to help me out.  & yes, this is how they really look. :D My boys are FUNny.  ='.'=

Whew! This post wasn't so hard to do. Thank GOD for all the old pictures saved on http://www.facebook.com/

Foam please ='.'=

Magandang Umaga! I'm a HelloKittyPhiliac which means...

Hello Kitty is an obsession of mine & since I love everything Hello Kitty, this first entry will show just a bit of my quirkiness.

I drink coffee at times for fun and am certainly not addicted to it (not like my SIL (Ate Marianne or Kuya Jeff). Having expressed that, I do not have a milk frother or an espresso machine (oops, but I do have a Keurig). I wanted to at least try to make Milk Foam so I could add a HK coffee art using milk foam as the base. I tried two different methods, for those that live in dorms and do not have a stove, I'll hook yah up with the microwave method. ANYWAYS...

MICROWAVE METHOD:

You will need: Microwave, Microwave safe bowl with enough room for foam creation & expansion (I used glass Pyrex), Electric Mixer or a whisk (I love my KitchenAid), Fresh Milk (I used 2%)

Microwave about 1 cup of milk in the bowl for about 2 to 3 minutes (depending on your microwave) or just before it expands and explodes into a huge mess. Be careful this will be very hot. Then carefully whisk/mix the milk until you have a lot of foam (usually double in size). You can pour some milk using a spoon to hold back the foam to make a cafe au lait OR Check out that HK mug with a lot of foam.

STOVE TOP METHOD:

You will need: Stove, Small sauce pan (I used Teflon coated), Electric Mixer (I have a KitchenAid) or a whisk, Fresh Milk (I used 2%)

Heat about 1 cup of milk in the sauce pan on medium to high setting, once you start seeing some steam but just before the milk boils, gently whisk the milk without splashing or scalding yourself (Teflon coated pans work great- just don't let the metal whisk/mixer scrape the bottom or sides of the pan). Remove the pan from the heat and continue to whisk/beat. Once you've created a fine foam (usually doubled in size) you can add that to your coffee or hot cocoa or "whateva" (sorry just had to put that in- my hubby dislikes that word- whateva).

SADLY---The foam did not serve as a good base for the Hello Kitty Coffee Art because once I added the chocolate powder the foam-bubbles popped and it was aesthetically ugly, so I used the milk instead. But with Hello Kitty in mind, I learned and experimented on how to make Milk Foam without a Frother or Espresso Machine at home.

Thanks for oogling my google blog.    ='.'=