Student Cake Month opens to Fun with Grandma Doughboy's Cinammon Buns

Today was the first day of student cake month - a competition to see who comes up with the best cake or confection. The ratings are on a scale of one to five stars with five stars only attainable if the offering has been homemade from scratch.  We have about 15 entries this year and one of them will be a Tiramusu-off where two of Italian ethnicity will put their tiramisu recipes up for judgement!

Careful preparation!

The presentation has to he just right!

The budding pastry chef

To start off we had Ed - our cake aficionado from last week.  From the culinary perspective what he came up with was interesting. Cinnamon rolls with various toppings and a few of them with the bottoms singed for added flavor.  Sort of like a brownie sundae only with a cinnamon roll instead of a brownie.  The rolls were good, soft and still warm from the oven. Their shape was certainly consistent and Ed informed us that was how things worked out with Grandma Doughboy's recipe. (Ed said that she got the name because if you poked her she squeaked but that he did not make it a habit.) They were also not too sweet so all the added toppings would work well together with the buns.

Lots of buns and consistent in shape!

Selection of homemade toppings

Ed's Homemade whipped cream!

Eddie assured us that all of the toppings were homemade and you can see from the first few pictures the intensity with which he unwrapped all the creations.  We were particularly impressed with his homemade whipped cream that he even got into a can.  In addition to the whipped cream there was homemade Nutella, homemade butterscotch, homemade sprinkles and homemade vanilla bean ice cream that he cleverly brought in a Breyer's ice cream carton. Lastly he had some homemade icing for the purists amongst the cinnamon bun fans that he had in some disposable metal ramekins.  Where did he find THOSE?

The crowd gets ready!

A representative creation!

Channeling DD!

Heavy on the homemade caramel

The master shows how it is done

No skimping on Ed's versikon!

Once everything was laid out folks got down to business and started creating their own cinnamon bun treats.  Some went the shortcake route with the ice cream sandwiched in the roll and the toppings above. Others avoided the ice cream and smeared their preferred frosting on the uncut roll. It was largely each to his own. Ed did put together one himself ostensibly as a demo version but most people had already figured something out.  In the end people were licking the bowls and getting that last drop of the homemade ice cream.

Finishing off the Nutella with some crackers!

Good to the last drop!

Of course if you believe any of this stuff is homemade I've got a bridge to sell you.  Nonetheless our entrant did take those buns out of the tubes and bake them in the oven.  And the whole event was creative and fun. So he gets three stars for the product and an extra star for imagination and execution - especially the "homemade" whipped cream. And he even bought a Rubbermaid container to carry them in.   Feel free to try this at home at you can grab just about everything at the local gas station mini-mart or in your grocer's dairy!

You don't think this is homemade?

I'm not going to be insulted!

I'm outta here!