Seriously Delicious Cinnamon Buns: January Green Drinks

What a wonderful evening! Eating cinnamon buns, drinking local mint tea and chatting about how to make the world a greener place.

Thanks to everyone who came out to January Green Drinks and shared in some cinnamon bun tasting. Here are some of the recipes:

Cinnamon Buns (David Dawson)

In a bowl combine:

2 cups white flour

2 cups whole-wheat flour

1½ tsp yeast

premix – 1½ cups warm water, ½ cup sugar (could use brown sugar?), 1 large egg - whisked, ½ tsp vanilla (optional), ¼ cup oil

add liquid mixture to flour and mix into a dough. 

A little extra water or flour may be necessary to achieve a nice soft dough. Knead until ‘rubbery’. 5 – 10 mins. Put dough back into the bowl, cover and allow to rise to double original size. Roll/stretch dough into a rectangle shape – about 12 x 24 inches. Spread with butter except the top 1 cm. Premix 1 cup brown sugar, 2 TBL cinnamon, pinch of ground cloves (optional) and spread sugar/cin mixture over, except the top 1 cm.

Some recipes include raisins and/or nuts at this stage. Wet the 1 cm strip with water. Roll up like Swiss roll and cut into approx. 1½ inch/4 cm pieces.  Place cut-side-up in a 9 x 13 well greased or covered in parchment paper baking pan. Allow to rise. Bake 30 mins at 375 deg F.

Premix some milk and sugar to make a syrup.  As soon as the buns come out of the oven brush this syrup all over.  (It makes a sticky and shiny surface).

Cinnamon Buns (Rebecca Hiebert)

1 ½ cup warm water

2 ½ tbsp oil

¼ cup sugar

4 cups flour

2 ¼ tsp instant yeast

½ tsp salt

softened butter

brown sugar

cinnamon

Add the yeast and sugar to the warm water and let sit for 10 minutes.  Add flour, salt and oil to a large bowl. Mix in the yeast mixture and stir until well combined. Knead for 5-10 minutes until the dough is smooth. Let rise until doubled in size. Roll out on a floured countertop until measures 24” x 12” (or so). Smear butter to a ¼" layer on the dough, sprinkle brown sugar thickly and spread to an even layer. Sprinkle cinnamon so that the dough is almost covered. Roll up the dough along the long side so you have a 24” tube. Cut up into 1” wide pieces with a sharp knife. Oil a 9x13 pan and place cut pieces with the rolled part facing up. Cover with a cloth and let rise until the buns are touching. Bake at 350 for 35 minutes or until brown.

Optional: add raisins or chopped nuts before rolling up.

Green Drinks January: Cinnamon Buns!!

Do you have a favorite Cinnamon Bun recipe? Do you enjoy eating Cinnamon Buns?!?!?! Join us for Green Drinks January as we taste-test homemade Cinnamon Buns. Please bring your homemade buns with a recipe to share or simply join us for some tasting!

When: Tuesday January, 13, 2015, 7pm
Where: Eric and Mary's, 484 Hanover St. Steinbach

The First Small Farms Conference in Manitoba

Saturday, January 10th,  11:00 am - 5:00 pm at the Oak Bluff Recreation Centre in Oak Bluff, MB. This conference is being organized by Small Farms Manitoba. More information here.

Candle Making Workshop!

We had a great evening last night during our Candle Making Workshop. David Dawson taught us how to make lovely, sweet smelling, beeswax candles. He described how to make the equipment, how to safely melt the wax, and the dipping technique that creates professional looking candles. We all took turns dipping and within 1 1/2 hours we had some gorgeous looking creamy yellow candles. Thanks David!!

Just Eat It

We had a great turnout for the showing of 'Just Eat It', an excellently produced Canadian film about food waste.

After the showing (punctuated by a slow internet connection!) we had a great discussion about the general problem of food waste, and we had a lot of concern about the waste throughout the food chain: food producers who waste what they know the grocery stores won't take, at food processors, at the grocery store, restaurants, as well as from our own homes. We learnt that households are responsible for discarding 25% of what they buy, which is a shocking waste of money, let alone food.

We concluded that we could probably do little to change what happens in the food chain further up, even though we were very concerned about it. However, things we could do included: menu planning, being creative with leftovers, cooking for friends when we have a glut of a particular item, sharing bargain purchases between households (whether from grocery stores, or direct from the producers), and participating in Fruit Share Steinbach, to glean produce that would otherwise go to waste.

Enjoy the film, refer it to friends - and see if it changes your eating habits!

You may also be interested in "The Gleaners and I", a 2000 French documentary by Agnes Varda. [Official Selection at 2000 Cannes Film Festival, and eighth best documentary film of all time according to a 2014 Sight and Sound poll.]