Cinnamon Roll Cake

As I mentioned earlier we had visitors for the weekend and one of them came with a recipe she wanted to make for us.  She had found this recipe for Cinnamon Roll Cake online, but couldn't remember the source (after some searching I believe it was originally from this blog).  Don't you love when visitors come complete with yummy recipes and a desire to bake.  This cake is incredible - so yummy - so not healthy, but so worth every bite.

Cinnamon Roll Cake Ingredients:
CAKE
3 cups of flour
1/4 tsp salt
1 cup sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 cups milk
2 eggs
1/2 cup butter, melted


TOPPING
1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
2 tbsp flour
1 tbsp cinnamon


GLAZE
2 cups icing sugar
5 tbsp milk
1 tsp vanilla

Method:
Preheat oven to 350F
Spray 9 x 13 glass pan
1. Mix together flour, salt, sugar, baking powder, milk, eggs, and vanilla.  Slowly stir in the melted butter.  Pour into pan.
2.  Mix 1 cup butter with brown sugar, flour, and cinnamon until well combined and creamy.  Drop evenly over batter by tbsp and use knife to marble/swirl through cake.
3.  Bake 35-45 minutes until toothpick is nearly clean.
4.  Mix icing sugar, milk, and vanilla together.  Drizzle over warm cake.  

Serve warm or room temperature and ENJOY!

Thanks Valerie.  It was delicious.

WISH Wednesday #27

Since I have quilts on my mind, I thought I would show you one of my all-time favourite bedrooms with a beautiful quilt on the bed for WISH Wednesday.  I love the gorgeous red and white quilt with the coordinating red, white, and light blue cushions.  I love the wide painted stripes on the floor, and I love the white-washed wood walls and ceiling.  

Sarah Richardson

Do you want to know something crazy?  When I was googling this picture I found two versions of this bedroom.  Want to play "What's different"?  I spotted six differences.

House and Home

Here are the six differences:

• the bedside table - the bedside table in the first photo is a very traditional white-washed table and the second one is a round red table
• the things on the night table - only the lamp is the same and all the other bowls, flowers, books etc are different (an aside:  I never would have thought to put peach coloured flowers in a red, white, and light blue bedroom, but they somehow seem to work)
• the pillows - in the first picture there are blue pillows at the bottom of the pile and a little striped pillow at the front and in the second picture there are fluffier white pillows on top of some red pillows and no little striped pillow
• the sheets - in the first picture there are red checked sheets showing where the quilt is turned back and in the second picture the sheets are white
• the curtain rods - in the first picture I think they have photoshopped out the part that is used to attach the rod to the ceiling and it is visible in the second photo
• the bench - the first photo has a pretty bench at the foot of the bed and the second photo doesn't

Anyone notice all of them?  

Isn't this bedroom incredible?  I think the simplicity of the colour palette keeps the room looking fresh and modern.  If you want to see other modern quilts have a look here.

10 Reasons I'm a Cast-Iron Girl

I'm pretty low key in the kitchen - no high tech gadgets, no fancy schmancy anything - just old school pots and pans and bowls and spoons.   So when Kate at Centsational Girl suggested having a kitchen gadget party I couldn't think of any I use.  But as I thought about the things I do use every day in our kitchen, I realized that our cast-iron frying pans and dutch oven are some of my favourites.  So although gadgets are small mechanical tools and cast-iron pans are a little outside of the gadget category, I thought I would share ten reasons I love using them.

Just looking at my cast-iron frying pan sitting there makes me want to start frying something.  We have two frying pans that are slightly different sizes and a dutch oven which has a lid that also fits on one of the frying pans and is so handy.  I use these babies daily.  So here are the ten reasons I love my cast iron pans:

1.  They were free - well mine were anyway as they were given to me by my Mother.  My Mother used them when I was young, but as my brothers and sisters and I left home my parents didn't need such big pans anymore.  My Mother also found them heavy to lift - which is a great segue to reason #2.

2.  You get a great arm workout lifting these pots and pans around.  Seriously, they are heavy so I store mine nested in each other on the back burner of our stove so I don't have to lift them from a cupboard.  That is about the only negative as far as I am concerned, but see how I spun it to be a positive.

3.  They take a lot of rough treatment - you can cut food in them (and I do regularly cut meat as it is thawing/cooking), you can use metal tools while you are cooking, and you can scour them with anything if something burns on them (which it rarely does because of the seasoning).

4.  You can make them look all purty and new again just by rubbing a drop of cooking oil around in them.  I don't actually do this too often as I find cooking in them keeps them seasoned enough.

6.  They heat evenly and keep the heat well.

7.  They add trace amounts of iron to your diet just by cooking in them.

8.  They can be used on the stove top for cooking and in the oven for baking or broiling.

9.  You wash them just by rinsing them in hot water - no detergent - and then dry them on the stovetop by turning the burner on for a minute or so.  Which leads me to #10.

10.  They are fun.   True fact:  Every night after supper when the kids were little, I would call out "Gather round, the pot is drying" and all the kids would come running to watch the fun.   I know - we are pretty simple folks and really should get out more.  For your viewing pleasure I took pictures of our frying pan drying.  I wish I had the time to figure out how to make it into a slide show, but you will just have to move your eyes quickly across the rows to get the effect (think of is as a silent film).

And to see some of my favourite soups that I make using our cast-iron dutch oven have a look here, here, here, and here.  Anyone else use cast-iron pots and pans?

Linked to Favourite Kitchen Gadgets at Centsational Girl

The Royal Botanical Gardens

About an hour's drive west of Toronto along the shore of Lake Ontario is the Royal Botanical Gardens - a perfect place to visit at this time of the year.  I went recently with my sister and a friend who were visiting us and it was simply gorgeous.  Every season is different at the Royal Botanical Gardens, so it is always interesting to see what catches your attention.  This visit was all about the spring flowers and flowering trees.  One of the things I loved were all the daffodil beds.   I actually had no idea there were so many different types of daffodils.  




There were classic yellow daffodils which are still my favourites.

But my heart was tempted by all these other pretties.  There were white daffodils with yellow coronas (the central part).

There were daffodils with orange cornonas - well to be more specific with double orange coronas, striped orange coronas, ruffled orange coronas, and bright orange coronas.

There were feathery daffodils,

and pink daffodils, 

and creamy yellow daffodils,

and mini-daffodils,

and big sister daffodils with little sister daffodils (I'm sure they are sisters).  I could go on and on  ....  oh wait, I did go and on about how pretty the daffodils are.  

We also enjoyed a walk through the forest down to the marsh in Hendrie Valley to see the giant rubik's cube that is there to make the squirrels feel frustrated and inadequate (or maybe I'm just projecting how I feel about rubik's cubes),

and a swan swanning around looking beautiful (well except for the dirty neck),

and a boardwalk to follow through the marsh so we could watch chirpy red wing blackbirds.

The highlight of the visit, though, was the Rock Garden which was strutting its spring finery.  Before the Royal Botanical Gardens obtained the land in 1927 this area was a complete eyesore with shacks surrounding an old gravel pit.  The Rock Garden was built in 1930-31 as part of a Depression era make-work project.  They worked miracles and now every spring the Rock Garden blooms with 125,000 bulbs and then later in the season with 40,000 annuals to make things lovely for our viewing pleasure.

For years my favourite type of tulips has been the red ones with a little edge of yellow.

But do you know what happened - another tulip stole my heart.  That's right, the surprising thing is it is pink and ruffly - not my sort of thing usually.  They ranged in colour from a very pale pink to a deeper rosy pink.  Yep, I've gone all girly this time.

Can you blame me.  I think I'll have to have two favourites now.  Okay make that three favourites - I was pretty taken with these double tulips as well.

On our way back to the car I spied some flowering cherry trees (they are at the far end of the Rock Garden parking lot in case you live nearby and are going to visit).  

These were ancient cherry trees with thick dark trunks and huge arching branches loaded with white and pale pink blossoms.  

I've always wanted to be under such gorgeous cherry trees when they were in full bloom and now I have been.   All I can say is that they were intoxicating.

If you are ever in the Toronto area you should make a day of going to the Royal Botanical Gardens and especially when the spring blossoms are out.  Apparently they have a world famous collection of lilacs too, which I would love to see one day.

Linked to Love the Place you Live Series at Design Mom

10 Modern Versions of a Traditional Art Form: Quilting

I love quilts! I love all the intricate patterns. I love all the pretty colours. I love the homey feel they give a room.  And I love the story behind each quilt.  I am always amazed by how much time and care goes into making quilts.  

Pottery Barn

I did a little research about the history of quilting and found it really interesting.   The earliest quilts - some dating back to ancient Egypt - were whole-cloth quilts.   We tend to think of quilting as a way that people used up small leftover pieces of cloth, but that was only true after the 1840s and 50s when two important events happened - the industrial revolution resulted in affordable commercial fabrics and the sewing machine was invented.  Prior to the 1840s only the wealthy had time to stitch quilts - everyone else was consumed with spinning and weaving cloth for the family to use as clothing and linens.  Wealthy women engaged in quilting as an art form and as a way to develop and show-off their needlework and display the expensive materials they were appliqueing.  When the use of commercially-purchased cloth to make clothing at home became widespread, it meant that women had the time to save scraps of cloth and sew them together to make beautiful pieced quilts.  Thus it was from the mid nineteenth century on that quilting entered the mainstream and became a popular craft form.

quilt/kwilt/

Noun:	A warm bed covering made of padding enclosed between layers of fabric and kept in place by lines of stitching.
Verb:	Join together (layers of fabric or padding) with lines of stitching to form a bed covering.

There are many different types of quilts - there are whole-cloth quilts, applique quilts, medallion quilts, block quilts, crazy quilts and many others.   In recent years many creative souls have come up with amazing modern versions of this ancient and traditional craft.  I was really surprised at the variety of lovely modern quilts when I started Googling and pinning quilt pictures.  Maybe these modern types of quilts are only new to me, but just in case you have missed the surge of creativity out there too I thought I would share what I found.

Let's have a look at ten new creative ideas for quilts:

1.  Raw edges - in these quilts the seam edges are turned to the outside instead of being carefully hidden away as they traditionally are.  As the quilt is washed the seam edges fray and turn soft and fluffy.

Bloom

2.  Strip quilts - I love the simplicity of these quilts - just strips of cloth sewn together to form a quilt.  Sometimes the strips are even and sometimes they are different widths.

Twin Fibers

3.  Zigzags - I love the simplicity of these quilts too, although something tells me they are a whole lot more complicated to make than the strip quilts.

Bea Spoke Quilts

4.  Circle quilts - the circle pattern is pleasing to the eye, but I bet all that sewing on a curve takes a lot of skill.

Cluck Cluck Sew

5.  Rainbows - I saw variations on the rainbow theme in many different patterns.  They are such a fun way to organize the scraps of material.

Quilting Gallery

Maniacal Material Girls

6.  Ruffle quilt - aren't these so pretty and feminine.  They must takes lots and lots of material to make each row of ruffles.

Urban Outfitters

Is her fake sleeping adorable or what?  from Under Construction

7. Map quilts - some of the map quilts were maps of whole countries, but the ones that caught my eye the most were quilts showing the streets of a town or city.  Wouldn't they be a great quilt to give as a sentimental gift.

Apartment Therapy

Ian Hundley, Oberg White at The Cork Board

Have and Hold Design

8. Souvenir/memory quilts - I've seen quilts that people sign to commemorate an event and quilts made pieces of favourite t-shirts or using ski bibs (like in the quilt below).

ski bibs Prints Charming

9. Picture quilts - the skies the limit with picture quilts.  There were endless styles of picture quilts so it was tough to narrow it down to only two.

EschHouseQuilts

Daniel Rouse

10.  Modern abstract quilts - these quilts look like modern art with amazing variety in form and colour.

French Knot

by Sherri Lynn Wood at Dainty Time

Sampaquita Quilts

For years I've had a secret desire to sew a quilt, but haven't quite got myself organized to make one yet.  While I love traditional quilts, I found these modern ones so inspiring and creative.  I'm not sure which type I would make - if I ever get around to it - as they all appeal to me in different ways.  Have you ever made a quilt?  What types do you prefer - modern or traditional?