baked cake doughnuts

Ok so if you didn't know (from this post, this post and this post) I love doughnuts-like A LOT. In fact I have a dream of one day opening a doughnut shop in my hometown on the Oregon Coast someday.

If I could eat doughnuts everyday I would but that wouldn't be so healthy. So recently I have been on a mission to make my own doughnuts without the frying.

When I found this super cool doughnut pan it sealed the deal- I had to make my own baked doughnuts. This great pan makes a variety of different doughnut possible!

To my surprise there are all sorts of fabulous baked doughnut recipes out there and I paired a couple of them together to come up with my own.

I started by mixing the dry ingredients-

2 cups of cake flour

3/4 cup of sugar

2 teaspoons of baking soda

1 teaspoon of salt

1/4 teaspoon nutmeg

1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon

and then added the wet ingredients and mixed everything together-

3/4 cup of buttermilk

2 eggs

2 tablespoons of butter

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Next I added the batter to the doughnut pan.

and baked at 350 degrees for 7-8 minutes.

I let them cool and then dipped the doughnuts in melted butter and then dipped then in cinnamon and sugar.

And while I put another batch in the oven I quickly devoured a warm cinnamon and sugar doughnut.

going....

going....

just about gone :) yum

For my second batch I made a simple glaze-

1/4 cup of milk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups of powdered sugar.

Combine everything in sauce pan and heat on low.

Whisk everything together until combined and remove from heat.

I dipped the doughnuts into the glaze

and set on a drying rack.

Regardless of the glaze or topping these doughnuts are so delicious but taste more like cake than a fried doughnut- a perfect way to satisfy a doughnut craving :)

scrappy pillow

Using stamps to create your very own fabric is easy and a perfect way to make yardage of fabric with unique pattern to use in a multitude of projects. Since I love creating pillows (it is the easiest way to change things up) I set out to create a neutral/brown pillow for the couch with lots of texture and scraps of hand stamped fabric.

I always make my own stamps or find something unique to stamp with. Typically I use craft foam and cut out shapes and carve into the foam with a wood burning tool. I have found that craft foam is cheap, durable and really great to use with fabric ink and paint. In addition I always try and find unique object or simple things that I can use as a stamps to repeat pattern across the surface of fabric.

For my neutral pillow I started by creating a few different stamps- the first was large chevron inspired pattern.

For my background fabric I picked up a set of really soft linen napkins in a natural beige- I really like stamping on linen.

When I am creating fabric that will get washed I typically use screen printing ink or fabric paint that can be heat set and made washable. I used the screen printing ink to "ink up" my stamp by applying paint to the surface with a brush.

And then started stamping onto the linen surface- note it can be challenging to get a stamped pattern perfect and often I personally am not going for perfect (I like when areas are faded or there are little drops of paint).

I added gold to the surface, again with fabric paint (Jacquard- Lumiere) made to be heat set.

I created more stamps and made another surface of pattern again with fabric paint.

After my fabric was dry and heat set, I dove into my scrap bin which consists of scraps of my painted fabric and scraps of recycled fabric and I picked out additional pieces that were in the neutral and brown family.

I cut up my scraps into all sorts of different sizes and pinned then to the surface of quilt batting.

Now, this is where I am different from other sewers and quilters out there- I sew and quilt everything on the outside with all of my stitching. WHY? I actually love the way it looks- stitching is just another way to add more texture. I love the look of stitching so much that I often say that if I could wear my clothes inside out to show the stitched seams I would!

Soon, very soon (like in August!) in you will be able to read about this process in full detail in my new book- Sew Wild.

But basically I pin everything down and then go to town free motion sewing on top of everything- sewing it all to the surface of the batting.

I used this piece of quilted and stitched scraps to create the front to a simple pillow, using another linen napkin for the backing, I stuffed it and added it to my pillow collection :)

seahorse inspiration

Photos taken on a recent trip to the Birch Scripps Aquarium.

pretty purple