Back again for another new year!

 I see I've done it again, no posts since September. It was a busy fall. One of my big problems is just failure to document. I need to remember to take pictures of stuff.

Anyway, when I was a kid on Christmas morning my mother would "make" cinnamon buns. I put make in quotes because she really just popped a Pillsbury can.

A few years ago, for Christmas, I snagged a can on cinnamon buns and was disappointed with the quality. You really can't go home again.

I can't remember if it was last year or the year before I decided to make my own dang cinnamon buns and fired up the bread maker. I changed up my usual dough with added sugar and they came out pretty good. 

For Christmas 2025 we kinda went crazy.

On Christmas eve we put together 3 bread doughs by hand. Looking back I don't appear to have written about making bread before which surprises the heck out of me. Anyway we threw together my standard bread recepie:

1C flour
1tsp salt
5/8tsp yeast
1 1/2C water

and let them rise overnight.

In the morning we rolled them out thin and made cinnamon rolls and 2 different styles of cinnamon bread:

I'd originally intended to just do cinnamon rolls but Angie had other ideas.

The thing on the left is a loaf of cinnamon bread, it's upside down which makes it look weird.

In retrospect the middle thing looks like a fox. They curl up like that to sleep. Next time we make one I'd put ears on it.

Overall as an experiment these were delicious and we'll be making more soon.

BACON!

Some of our friends invite us to a cookie party every year around Christmas. The idea is you bring a dozen or more cookies and go home with a mixed bag of cookies that everybody else made. Its pretty fun and we really like going.

The first year we went I tried to make bacon cookies. The plan was flawed from the start I didn't really have enough time so I tried taking pre-made sugar cookie dough and stuffing bits of cooked bacon in it. In the end I had really thing crunchy cookies with overcooked bacon inside. Since I had some extra bacon I coated it with maple syrup calling it "candied bacon". The cookies were blah but the candied bacon was a big hit. The following year I refined the technique and today I've got it down to a science, so to spice up your parties heres my magical candied bacon.

This year I used 3 1/2 pounds of bacon but more is of course better. Cook the bacon halfway. I do it on baking sheets in the oven, this step takes around 15 minutes, I use two pans and rotate them between the two racks halfway through. For easier cleanup line the pans with aluminum foil.
While the bacon is cooking put 2 cups of maple syrup in a pan, add 2/3 cup dark brown sugar, warm the mix until the sugar dissolves.

When the bacon is all half cooked cut it into 2-3 inch strips, put in a bowl with the maple syrup, stir and let it cool some.

Pour the bacon grease out of your pans (keep the same aluminum foil), put bacon on a single layer in the pan and cook for another 10 minutes or until the bacon is completely cooked. Let the bacon cool in a container before you transfer it to another container for eating. This step is important as the bacon will tend to stick together while it cools.