Cinnamon Roll Waffles with the King

The latest adventure for my alter ego "The Waffle King" has been a surprisingly unique, yet easy recipe. I had come across this one while looking through my fiancé's Pinterest pins. How she found this, I don't know, but there before me was a golden brown delicious looking Cinnamon Roll waffle all drizzled with sweet creamy frosting! Since It made me drool all over my laptop, I had to give it a whirl, so, here we go!

Adventures in a land of cinnamon with The Waffle King!

Cinnamon Roll meets Waffle!

So for starters, let me just reference where I found the recipe. I have to give props where props is due, so thanks to the good people at Love from the Oven for sharing what I'm sharing with you. (Great work Christi!)

Butter Cream frosting. Who wants to lick a beater?

This was the first deviation from Love from the Oven's recipe that I did. The original called for Duncan Hines' frosting creations as the frosting, but since the store I went to only had the cinnamon flavor and not the starter, I decided to make my own from scratch. Besides, why should I pay extra for frosting when I had the ingredients to make my own already at the house? I just pulled an easy recipe from All Recipes.com: The Perfect Cinnamon Roll Icing Recipe

The process of course is all waffle king. I got the iron out and went to work. Since I make a habit of cleaning my irons shortly after I finish cooking, all I had to to was pull it out, give it a quick wipe down, and get ta cookin!

Finished product

So I paired my newest recipe acquisition with some old favorites scrambled eggs, Canadian maple bacon, and a tall glass of sweet delicious POG!

Up close and delicious

The Spread

I just had to take some shots to showcase my photography skills. I still would like to get a food photography gig at some point. ;) Who knows, as I'm building this mini portfolio, it may turn into something big in the end...I just have to get another regular sized camera as mine was stolen along with my car in January. But that's a story for another blog...

First Bite

Well, what can I say? Using cake mix to make waffles doesn't necessarily produce as crispy a waffle as I like, but when you take into consideration that cinnamon rolls aren't crispy, these were perfect! Warm, soft and perfect! I think in the icing came out great although I will drop a little cinnamon in the next batch, and as great as it looks on the waffles themselves, I think these would be best dipped in the icing and eaten!

These will definitely make it on the Waffle King's regular circuit! Just be ready for a few more twists and tweaks in the batches to come! 

Donut Men

So to continue in our tradition of Food Adventures, Josh, Grant and I decided to take a break from our Ramen House expeditions and go for some dessert. The choice this time around was pretty easy as we had been talking about visiting The Donut Man for sometime now.

The Donut Man

My personal experience prior to this one was mostly word of mouth and a little internet research. What I kept hearing and seeing were the words "Fresh Fruit" and "Tiger Tails", so for this run, I already had in mind what I was going to get...it was now just a matter of getting there. For this run we were facing rain, hail and the dreaded LA traffic...No Problem!

Customers out in the rain

So on to the proverbial 'meat' of the story...

Strawberry Donut

Again, since I already knew what to expect, my eyes went straight to the window that housed these delicious treats. I was really hoping that there would be some left since these are seasonal and in high demand, and Oh Glory! there were some available and they were super fresh! I wish I had started the video earlier so you all could see the looks on the faces of Josh & Grant when they saw the strawberry donuts! (I can imagine the looks on YOUR faces now! Haha!)

Donut Man Donut racks WITH
chocolate covered strawberries!

Strawberry Donut Rack

The great part about what I saw was that every donut on the rack looked like they had just been placed out there for us to consume just a few minutes before our arrival. (Mind you we started this Food Adventure at about 7pm.) There were cake donuts with various flavors and colors, stately and pristine looking french crullers deliciously decorated in flavorful frostings. Old fashioned donuts dressed in their traditional garb of glazed and chocolate coats (and a few 'naked' ones too!) sat on display with rows of luscious chocolate strawberries, and possibly the most interesting of the menagerie, were the inside out creme donuts with raspberry swirl designs! I could have purchased them all, but I had to stay focused. Strawberry Donuts and Tiger Tails on this run!

Grant completing his order with a chocolate milk
"I guess that's a dollar..." Lol

 This was a really nice run. The three of us hadn't been together in quite some time, especially on a food run, so this was quite fun! I do enjoy giving the fellas "The Business" as we say.

Josh grabbing a couple of napkins...I think one of
them had the associate's number on it!

Josh was being all camera shy tonite, so unfortunately ladies, you don't get to see his handsome face...which may be a good thing, cuz you might fall in love! Hahaha!

One of the cool things we got to do was watch as the next batch of donuts were being made. There are two picture windows that flank either side of the building, and it's through these that we got to see several batches of dough go through the process of becoming various different donuts. It's like watching an episode of Discovery's "How It's Made" live! Enjoy the video...and us being silly! 

Making Tiger Tails

Now as stated earlier, the other donut that the Donut Man is famous for are the Tiger Tails. Admittedly, I had not had a Tiger Tail before this run. (Shame, I know!) For those who were like I was, A Tiger Tail basically is a twist donut with a streak of chocolate in it. They're long and have a bulbous end, which mimics the tail of a tiger. 

The Finished Tiger Tail

These were quite tasty! Soft, flaky, soft and sweet with just a touch of chocolate in every bite! No being the notoriously slow eater that I am, I was able to savor every bite. It felt like I was eating about a mile's length of donut because these are longer than your average twist donut!

Crumb, Cruller, and Cake donuts
in various stages of completion.

 The Donut Man really had it poppin on this night, and since they're a 24/7 kind of place, I'm sure they have it poppin every night! We all agreed that we would be back since there were so many other donuts to try, and we would DEFINITELY come back in the summer time when Peach will be the featured seasonal fruit! Imagine that donut filled with sweet juicy peaches....Mmmmm!

Through rain, hail, cold, darkness, and dreaded LA Traffic, we will press on towards the next Food Adventure. Until then,

Happy Eating!

Super Saiyan Series #3

So, in the ever continuing Saiyan Illustration Series, the Original Sketch turned out to be a great launch for my latest series of avatars. This Image is the next step in the process. Instead of merely scanning the sketch for this go round, I slipped the sketch onto a light board, and inked a "clean" copy on another piece of paper, then scanned it in.

Earth Background

Space Background

Namekian Background

I put the inked version to the side temporarily to work with my more "sketchy" version. I did three variations, an earth background, a space background, and a Namekian background based on the landscape of Planet Namek.

I had to draw in the clouds and a Namekian landscape to complete the overall loose feel of the two images, then I added the appropriate color fills and effects to finish them.

The space background was pure Photoshop fun! I picked the star field up from some old school notes I had taken a while back, and I actually just played with various effects and shapes to create the planets. I love "playing around" and seeing what I can accomplish! ;)

 

Avatar Montage

After I had created each version, I decided to put them together in a bit of a Warhol-esque montage. Turning simple illustration into high end pop art. Cool, huh! I am willing to sell some prints!

Final Vectorized Version

Once I had played around with my sketches enough, I picked up the inked version and set to work to complete it. Illustrator makes this task pretty easy and fun. I did some color fills with the Live Paint function, and added some slight shadows. I found a font that replicates the DragonBall Z font very well and stretched some of the letters to fit the image. I had to do some work and hook the "O" up to make it look wore like the DragonBall in the original font. For the background I took the "sea" from the earth sketch, then I used a Cloud Tutorial from one of my favorite design tutorial websites abduzeedo.com to give it the same feel as the main image.

This is phase 3. Phase 4 of the series is already done and I'll be posting it soon, so stay tuned!