Holla!

I am so sorry, I feel like I have been neglecting my pretty pink mixer.  Here's the scoop...my boyfriend and I decided to do a 30-day challenge of no desserts and no alcohol for 30 days (obviously).  I felt like I had been making entirely too many sweets lately so it was just kind of a spur of the moment, let's break the habit type of thing (and stop adding on the pounds).  As you can tell from the blog, the majority of things I make are desserts...bars and cookies, basically. So in the meantime, I started another blog, which I hope you will check out, called Food for Fuel.  Basically, it's days in the life of me. I take pictures of meals, talk about my exercising, life, all that good stuff.  I read blogs all the time---both baking and food blogs and health blogs and this blog is more along the lines of a "healthy" blog.  Still love my sweets and dessert, but I also love eating healthy and wanted to share that with everyone.

So because I couldn't make desserts and enjoy them, I was taking a break from my pretty pink mixer.  However, my red-headed friend, Ellie, was in town the past few weeks and we made a bunch of Challah!  Yummy, yummy traditional Jewish bread that we make not so traditional by adding all sorts of different flavorings to. Like rosemary-garlic, whole wheat, cinnamon-chip, chocolate chip, etc.  I LOVE making sandwiches out of just plain challah. My favorite is a grilled cheese sandwich on challah with pickles and spicy mustard. Delish!  Unfortunately, I never took pictures of all the challah we made, so I decided to make some by myself today.

Ellie started the organization Challah for Hunger that now has chapters at multiple university locations in the U.S. AND Australia. Be sure to check out her page and efforts. In any case, the recipe I made for Challah is hers that she uses for all of her chapters.  It's by far the BEST challah recipe ever.  At least, I think so. 

It's pretty easy to make, especially her new and improved method of using instant active yeast.  Just takes time to rise.  Another thing about this Challah is that it's completely vegan, as Ellie is herself.  

Here's the problem I ran into. For the life of me, I can never remember how to braid the challah. So I did a "makeshift" braid and stuck it in a loaf pan because I wanted to slice it for sandwiches anyways.  

The other half of the dough I got creative with. I wanted to do a cinnamon breakfast type bread like the cinnamon chip bread from Great Harvest Bread Co.  So, I made balls of dough (golf ball size) and stuffed them with cinnamon chips, then put them in a round aluminum cake and sprinkled the top with cinnamon. We'll see how it turns out. And since I'm calling it a breakfast bread and would probably eat it for breakfast, I'm not considering it a dessert. :)

Things I would change....maybe dust cinnamon sugar around the pan or roll the dough in cinnamon sugar rather than just sprinkle on top. I guess it depends on how sweet you want it.

Unfortunately, I cannot give out the recipe to just anyone but if you feel inspired and would like to e-mail Ellie for the recipe, visit her website at challahforhunger.org. :)

Until next time!