pain aux raisins

I made another of the "favorite recipes" from this site.

for the pain aux raisins, I added lots of raisins (my husband loves them).

I used a pastry bag with a star tip to pipe in the cream cheese filling.

I had one of the nicer Saturdays in a while this past weekend (thanks to a trip to Trader Joe's and the local Farmers' Market), and I followed it up by baking the pain au lait I prepared on Friday night into cream cheese snails and pain aux raisins.

Couple of things:

I have to make sure I work faster next time. I kept on re-rolling the dough for the pain aux raisins because I wasn't happy with my rectangle, and the dough started to get warm and stick like crazy. In the end, the dough was uneven, and some parts were thinner than others, resulting in major tearing. Some of the rolls were more like blobs of dough, raisins, and cinnamon.

I should make less cream cheese filling next time. After measuring out the amount specified in the recipe, I realized I had only a spoonful more of cream cheese left in the package so I threw it in. The snails ended up covered in, rather than filled with, cream cheese. Still tasty, though.

When I finished, I realized I had around 2 dozen pastries (after eating some, of course) that I would never be able to eat before they went bad. So, I ended up bringing them to my rehearsal tonight. All but one cream cheese snail were taken.

Agenda for next week: try the cranberry-chocolate sweet buns. Well, raspberry-chocolate sweet buns (no frozen cranberries at TJ's).

EDIT:  Oh, I forgot! I finally got my own instant yeast (I had been using my roommate's active dry). Amazing stuff.

my first sourdough loaf... as i suspected since the starter was only a week old, it was not the strongest of sourdough i've ever had, but it was not bad. tasted more like a french bread with a slight sour. my family ate it up!

cream cheese snails! they came out much larger than i though they would and i ended up making ten, rather than eight, so maybe next time i will adjust the dimensions slightly and lessen the baking time. all in all though, they came out pretty good. best with a cup of tea!

pain aux raisins. i made 10 of these too in addition to the snails. i left 5 of each at home with my family and within a night and a morning they were all gobbled up (between 4 people). so i guess my family approved!

and last but not least - gingerbread dinosaurs! haha, i hand carved them all since i do not have any cookie cutters. i brought them to a party and to my surprise they were all gobbled up. i did though have one complaint. my father said they were crunchy... but i told him they were supposed to be, like ginger snaps! alas, he was just mad that he could not eat them like everyone else because he is having teeth troubles.