Cinnamon Rolls

Think of this post as a public service announcement.  I am going to just take a minute here to highly recommend, that, on your next rainy Sunday morning, you click on over to the Pioneer Woman's website and get to work on these cinnamon rolls.  You and your family will be very, very happy.  We were!

If, like me, you only have two people in your family, this recipe halves very well.  This was a relief, since I think that even though it's just the two of us...we could have easily polished off the 50 of these that the entire recipe makes!  I made half the recipe, which yielded just about 20 cinnamon rolls.  I baked them all, but froze one tray.  We had unexpected guests that afternoon, and polished off the first tray.  With mulled apple cider (boozed up with some Butterscotch Schnapps, thanks mom!) and a little early Halloween candy, it was, I have to say, my best party ever.  And completely unplanned.

I daresay, Martha would have been proud.  And maybe even the Pioneer Woman.  I am lucky enough to have her cookbook, and have definitely gotten a lot of use out of it.  But the rest of you can just follow this link.  I will say this though -- I am pretty sure I have never used so much butter and sugar at once!  Nor made such a mess of my tiny kitchen.  All totally worth it. I am now considering using that much butter and sugar in everything!  Turns out...fat and sugar taste very, very, very good indeed.

Tomato-Basil Pizza

Well, let me tell you something if you don't already know it...that Pioneer Woman really knows what she is talking about!  I am in proud possession of her cookbook, and so far every recipe that I have tried from it has been a hit!  We had my sister-in-law and her boyfriend over for dinner Saturday night, and I made this pizza recipe, which everyone loved.  My husband declared it my most professional pizza yet!  He is quite a pizza connoisseur, so that is high praise from him.  Since I followed the recipe as it is, I'll just give you this link to it -- the step-by-step photos are great.  I followed the recipe with the pesto, not the fresh basil leaves (only the pesto version made it to the book).  This recipe is terribly easy and terribly tasty, which is pretty much what I look for when we entertain!  I will 'fess up to using store-bought pesto.  I buy this little jar from Classico  for about $2.50 (in the tomato sauce section) which is much cheaper for us than buying all the basil and the pine nuts that I'd need for homemade pesto!  Perhaps some day I will grow basil and manage not to kill it long enough to make pesto!  But for now, well, let's just say that if plants could run when they saw me coming, they would. 

By the way -- I also used the Pioneer Woman's recipe for pizza dough, which I was thrilled with.  Plus, the recipe yields enough for two pizzas, which means I now have homemade ready-made dough in my freezer!  Tell you the truth, it was just as easy as picking up pizza dough at the store...especially since my husband cleaned out the mixer bowl!