English Madeleines: Mini Sponge Cakes bathed in jam and rolled in desiccated coconut | The Novice Housewife

When I posted the picture for these english madeleines on instagram I mentioned that my house smelled of my childhood. And it surely did. In fact when I was washing the cupcake pan, it still smelled of the memories from my younger days, even though the madeleines had been removed and set aside a while back.

My mother used to make them when I was a kid. My brother and I loved them – bite after bite of buttery goodness. Although the original recipe calls for baking the batter in Dariole Moulds, my mom used to make them shaped like a regular cupcake- since she did not own a dariole mould. And then bathed them in jam and desiccated coconut. So I made them the same way in cupcake pans- not because I do not own dariole moulds (I actually don’t) but because that’s they way I remember english madeleines to be.

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Whole Wheat Dinner Rolls | The Novice HousewifeI had been eyeing this recipe for sweet buns on allrecipes.com for a while now. It had great reviews and I am always looking for new bread recipes to try. Plus it seemed easy to put together. And with such great reviews I was sure I will not be disappointed. And I was right, after about two hours of kneading, resting and baking, I had light and fluffy (and absolutely delicious) dinner rolls. I also got an absolutely drool worthy cinnamon swirl bread. And with my love for all things cinnamon I honestly cherished the cinnamon swirl bread more than the rolls. And that actually says a lot about the bread since the rolls were amazing without any additions!

The recipe makes 16 dinner rolls. I used half the dough to make 8 dinner rolls and the other half I used to make the cinnamon swirl bread. I do not have a recipe, but I followed the same instructions I do when I make cinnamon rolls. Rolled out the dough to a rectangle (keeping it 9 inch long, and as wide as I could with a thickness of about 1/4th inch) and spread softened butter on the rolled out dough, followed by a generous sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on top. I rolled the dough up and let it rise in my bread pan. To achieve the shape I have in the pictures, I cut the rolled up dough like you do for cinnamon rolls (but slightly thinner in thickness)  and put each cut part side by side in the bread pan. I wish I had pictures because I feel I might not be explaining this too well. If that’s the case, sorry!

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"Holi Cow" Holi theme sugar cookies | The Novice Housewife

St. Patrick's Day theme Sugar Cookies | The Novice Housewife

I know I haven’t posted on GMT for the longest time and even though I had a recipe that I wanted to share with you guys, I also had these cookies to share. And since they are holi and St.Patrick’s Day specific (both of which Indians and the Irish celebrated yesterday or day before, depending on which part of the world you are), I did not want to delay this post.

I tried a new sugar cookie recipe for these cookies. Overall I liked the taste of the cookies, probably because instead of vanilla extract I used lemon extract in both the cookie recipe and the royal icing and I love lemon. Lemon pound cakes, lemon rolls, lemon pie. I love it in anything.

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