Baking bread - you are my Everest

I mentioned on Monday that I'll happily spend $50 on baked goods.  Reason being I have never been able to successfully bake decent bread myself.  I haven't worked out why but bread is my Everest.  Most other things I am capable of baking.  I think it's the yeast that trips me up.  Or the proofing.  I have no patience for proofing.

Well yesterday work sent me home after 2 hours (something about spreading my germs around cough cough).  I've been sick for almost a week and not improving at all.  Anyway I digress....

I'd like to announce that I successfully made a cinnamon pull-apart loaf yesterday!  You can find the recipe here so I won't copy and paste it, but I highly recommend listening to her tips, mainly these 2:

1. Reduce the sugar in the filling part of the recipe to 3/4 cup. I had so much extra sugar left over, I sprinkled all of it over the top creating a toothaching sweet outer crust.
2. Don't add too much flour to the sticky dough, it's meant to be sticky. My loaf turned out a lot denser than it should have been since I continually added flour to prevent it from sticky while I was kneading it.

Anyway, this is how mine looked along the way...

The calm before the storm

Sticky... really sticky

Try to use as little flour as possible - just enough to roll it out without having it stick to the bench

I've made a right hot mess

Melted butter brushed onto dough

The best bit - cinnamon sugar layer!!

Chop chop chop

Laid into a loaf tray

After it's proofed for a further 30 mins

 And 30 minutes in the oven gives you...

Oh it's so damn good.  I cut the amount of sugar from 1 cup to 3/4 but next time I'll cut it further to 2/3.  The bread is so light and fluffy - a vast improvement from my previous attempts.  I think the trick was not to over-flour as I was rolling it out (something I was guilty of doing previously).  Maybe next time I'll also substitute half the flour for wholemeal flour?

What to bake (and eat) when you don't like sweets

I don't really eat sweets even though I'm more than happy to bake them and bring them to a lunch/dinner.  I was inspired to make this cake by Jharna from Baking Myself Happy (and also because my flatmate came home with 9 limes... really?  9??).  I found a recipe on Taste (not the one Jharna used as that one's not up yet) and decided to make it for Tom's grandparents.

The original recipe is here but I adjusted it slightly.  I used just under 1 cup sugar for the cake and only the rind of one lime for the syrup (but I still used the lime from 3 juices).  This cake is really not sweet at all, and the lime syrup cuts through the small amount of sugar there is.  If you prefer (normal) sweeter cakes, I would use 1.5 or 2 cups of sugar.

Slight crack in it which I successfully covered with the lime rind/syrup

Delicious!