Baked some Princess Leia Cinnamon Rolls in tribute to the inspiring, witty, and humorous Carrie Fisher... because it is often said that her Leia hairstyle looks like cinnamon rolls. It takes a while to get used to, but the cinnamon roll hairstyle does start to grow on you. Now, I find it quite cute haha. 

“Stay afraid, but do it anyway. 

What’s important is the action. 

You don’t have to wait to be confident. 

Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.” 

“It was the first time I actually lived on my own. I was finally away from my mother (whom I’d happily live off of but not with), in an apartment I was subletting from a friend, where no one could be disappointed in me—and if someone oddly should be, I didn’t care, because they weren’t related to me.”

“He was much more on the good side of the bad/good human graph. He was bad and good, like most people. A good person who does bad things or a bad person who does good things—as long as people are involved, people will do bad or good things to them.”

PRINCESS LEIA CINNAMON ROLL RECIPE

Recipe adapted from: 

Baking therapy: What do you do when you miss a place? Try to recreate a taste of it. My heart longs for Tokyo like never before, and so I baked the first thing I laid my teeth into when I touched down in Japan in 2012 - a melon pan. 

Despite its name, a melon pan (bread) does not contain any melon flavouring. A melon pan is a Japanese bread with a sweet crispy crust. It gets its name because of the patterns that resembles a melon's skin. 

I made the melon pan into a turtle form like the popular turtle melon pan from Boulangerie Shima in Tokyo, Japan. Try out the recipe below!

ENGLISH CRANBERRY SCONES RECIPE
Adapted from: Entertaining with Beth

Ingredients
[For Scones]
256 g of All-purpose Flour
25 g of Caster Sugar
8.5 g of Salt
16 g of Baking Powder
152 g of Unsalted Butter (Very cold and diced into small cubes)
115 g of Heavy Cream
1 tbsp Vanilla
2 Eggs
100 g of Cranberries

[For Egg Wash]
1 Egg

Instructions
1. Mix the dry ingredients: In a large bowl whisk together the flour, sugar, salt and baking powder.
2. Work in the butter: Add the butter cubes into the flour and massage with your hands until they start to look like bread crumbs.
3. Add the cranberries: Toss in the cranberries and mix gently to combine.
4. Mix the wet ingredients: In a separate small bowl whisk the heavy cream, eggs and vanilla until combined.
5. Combine wet and dry ingredients: Create a small well in the center of the flour mixture. Pour the cream mixture into the well, and stir with a fork until combined, and then change to a large wooden spoon. Be careful not to over-mix as you might get really hard scones!
6. Wrap the dough: Turn the dough out onto a cling wrap. Form into a disk, cover with cling wrap and refrigerate for 30 mins, or pop in the freezer for 10 mins.
7. Cut out scones: Roll the dough out to 1/2" thickness. Cut out scones with a 2" round cookie cutter and place on a parchment lined baking tray.
8. Egg wash: Then whisk 1 whole egg in a small bowl, then with a pastry brush lightly glaze the tops of the scones with the egg wash.
9. Re-chill: To assure your scones retain their shape after they are baked pop your tray into your fridge for 15 mins before baking. This will re-chill the dough and allow them to bake up in a more uniform fashion.
10. Baking: Bake for 10-12 mins in a preheated oven at 200 degrees celsius until risen and golden brown. Serve plain, or with clotted cream and jam!

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight... 

[Bread making is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world's sweetest smells... there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. that will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.” 

 

Nothing beats the smell of freshly baked bread, other than tasting it. Enjoy!

I have a confession - I dislike sweet stuff. There, I said it. It might come as a shock to some people, as it's only natural to assume that a dessert baker likes sweet treats. However, I think my body is programmed to reject things that are too sweet. Even as a kid, I had headaches and experienced nauseousness when I ate candy (especially the hard kind). Germaine tells me I'm so lame for being allergic to sweets hahaha. This is one of the reasons why I like Japanese desserts, as they are lighter and there is a fine balance of sweetness.  

Despite this, I still make exceptions to sweet treats, and one of them is eating cinnamon rolls! I remember falling in love with them on a winter's night in Korea (I think... I was young and my geography has never been good). It was cold and the roads were covered in mist. After a day of traveling and sight-seeing, my mum brought my sister and I to a cinnamon roll cafe. Having finally gained relief from the harshness of winter, we shared piping hot cinnamon rolls that were fresh from the oven. That first bite of fluffy bread and the sweet crunchiness of the cinnamon filling was the defining moment of my love for cinnamon rolls. 

This is my first time making cinnamon rolls. I always put it off because the recipes I came across were always very tedious (and I'm lazy haha). I happened to chance upon the recipe to make cinnamon rolls on lecremedelacrumb, and it was a simple recipe that only requires a slow-cooker! It is fuss-free and not time consuming, probably making it the easiest recipe out there for cinnamon rolls. 

And since there's a trend of combining two kinds of food into one, like the Cronut (croissant and donut) and now the Cruffin (croissant and muffin), I thought  of combining cinnamon rolls and cake - Cinnamake, if you'd like to call it.

I baked this Cinnamon Roll Cake for my dear grandmother's birthday party, and my family and relatives loved it. Here's the recipe!