Danish Cinnamon Snails

Yields about 18

Dough

• 2 tsp dry yeast • 200ml finger warm full cream milk • 50g sugar • 1 tsp salt • 2 eggs • 520-550 g plain flour • 100g soft salted butter

Filling

• 200g soft salted butter • 200g dark brown sugar • 2 tbsp cinnamon

Brushing dough

• 1 lightly whisked egg

Dough

1) Warm up milk, add butter and eggs and mix together 2) Put flour (start with 520g, then add more when bringing dough together if needed), dry yeast, sugar and salt in a large bowl and mix well.

3) Add the wet ingredients to flour mix and bring dough together. Knead dough for 5 min until it’s smooth and supple. Put in bowl and cover with damp cloth and let proof for 1 hrs.

Filling

While the dough is proofing, mix together the filling ingredients with a fork.

Assembly

1) When the dough is finished proofing, put a little flour on table to roll out dough into a flat rectangle about 1 cm in thickness (not too much flower as this will make the cakes dry). 2) Ladle on the filling and spread out over entire rectangle. 3) Roll the dough on the long edge enclosing the filling, try to roll as tight as possible. 4) Cut 2-3 cm pieces from the roll and place them in a baking tray on baking paper. You need to face the side up so you can see the filling in between the layers of dough. 5) Place the snails about 1cm apart in the baking tray, if tray is not big enough use 2 trays. 6) Let the snails proof again for 30-40 min under a damp cloth. 7) Turn oven on 200 degrees (not fan forced) 8) Baste the snails with whisked egg 9) Bake in middle of the oven for 15-20 min, keep an eye on them – they should be golden (and ovens warm differently)

Let them cool down for 10 min and enjoy (they might get stuck a bit together when baking, just use a knife to gently pry them apart. You can also freeze them and reheat when wanting a snack.

Starting to look like a house!!!

Our house building has continued while the Corona virus has been going on, thankfully construction is one of the "essential" services that continues at the moment, even as we are going into our 2nd lock-down from yesterday (midnight 8th July 2020).

While we still had the chance - without be nervous about the $1652 fine issued to people who are driving around for non-essential reasons - Oscar and I went to the house yesterday to check progress. We were lucky that a trades person was there, so we could get in and see everything.

A lot has happened since my last update, 

1. the outside of the house is completely rendered and finished off, we are just waiting for a garage door to be installed.
2. plaster has gone up on all walls inside, along with skirting boards, architraves and doors, and the whole house has been painted.
3. just this past two weeks, water proofing has been done and all cupboards have been installed in the bathrooms, kitchen and laundry.
4. Tiles have been delivered ready for install in the bathrooms/laundry/kitchen.

We have visited the house a few times during this period, however I've somehow not managed to get pictures uploaded...

We are excited it's finally starting to look like a house 😃

Here are some pictures;

Front of house fully rendered with timber detail on porch

Bathroom cupboards, navy blue 😍

water proofing done in bathroom, ready for tiling

Ensuite bathroom with navy cupboards and double sinks

water proofed shower recess in ensuite

floor tiles for bathrooms and laundry 😍😃

entry hallway

Kitchen area with raked ceiling 😍 Those three funny lamps at the top will be
changed into pendants over the island

Kitchen drawers for dayssssss 😃 and handle free (nothing to catch your clothes on)

space for two wall ovens 

pull out bins for normal trash and recycling 😃

Kitchen Island with all the cupboards (stone benchtops are being made this week)

Kitchen viewed from our living/dining room. The door in the corner is the walk-in pantry.

Walk in pantry with more drawers 😍 and marble look benchtop (laminate) for
appliances, coffee machine, kettle, etc. so they don't take up space on kitchen bench.
The benchtop in the kitchen is similar just in ceasarstone.

My FANTASTIC pull-out pantry!!!! 😃😃😃

Laundry with space for washing machine and dryer under benchtop.

Oscar's room, they have finished painting walls, ceilings and skirting boards and architraves.

Hebel, render and plumbing rough-in

We've had a lot, and I mean A LOT of rain for the last half of April, so our house build has been slightly delayed due to wet weather, and we did not quite reach lock-up stage before 1st May as we hoped. HOWEVER, we are very close!

As you can see from the pictures, the weather has been very cloudy and gloomy, but thankfully dry the last couple of days.

We had a meeting with our site manager Hayden, the electrician and the heating company guy (Stuart) Friday morning, as we needed to make sure the electrical rough-in, which will happen this coming week, will allow for our electric heating panels in the right spots.

It was nice having an official appointment and get to go into the house with our building supervisor and electrician and the guy from the heating company. We of course all kept our social distance of 1.5m!!

Plumbing rough-in for the sink in the kitchen bench

Plumbing for ensuite bathroom - double vanity

Plumbing rough-in for shower, plus other plumbing running in the roof. Purple is re-cycled water and yellow is gas for the gas cooker in the kitchen, and for the gas-boosted water heater.

more plumbing rough-in running through the roof.

Laundry plumbing. Not sure why the recycled water is here, as I've specifically said I don't want my washing machine hooked up to that! Luckily, I also see the normal water connections here, so maybe I can choose.

Seeing almost all the outside hebel panels up and rendered in most areas really gives us an idea now of the outside look and feel of our house 😊 It's great to see, and will be even better after everything is painted. 

Front of house, hebel not completely done, nor rendered.

Front hebel panels can be seen un-rendered, while side of the garage has been rendered.

Laundry / living room side of house rendered. Hebel still missing on the alfresco post.

Garage and living room side mostly rendered, a few spots missing hebel and render.

Back of house and alfresco. Hebel still needs to go on the corner post and be rendered,

Back of house rendered. Window into Oscar's room, and sliding door to our separate lounge.

Bedroom and bathroom side of house rendered.

Here at the front of the house, they are still completing the hebel panels, no render yet.

A look into our entry, Hi Oscar! He's in our big family room.

Bedroom side of house rendered.

Lock-up will hopefully happen in the next week or so, and our site manager Hayden said he hoped for everything inside to be fully plastered and painted by the end of the month!!

So this was possibly the last time we were able to go on site and get inside our house. After lock-up we can only look through the windows to see what's happening...

We also have an approximate idea of when the house will be finished, even though Hayden did not really want to commit fully - we are guessing due to uncertainties about suppliers and weather delays, but we are possibly looking at end of July for completion of our house, which means we can move early August! 😊

Daily exercise trip in the local area during COVID-19 lock-down

It feels really strange to write about being in lock-down. Who would have predicted that a virus could close down most countries for months on end when 2020 started?! 

In these COVID-19 virus times, Victoria are currently under Stage 3 restrictions, which means we are only allowed to leave our house for 4 reasons:

1. Shopping for what we need - food and essential supplies
2. Medical, care or compassionate needs
3. Exercise in compliance with the public gathering requirements (min 1.5m distance to other people, only 2 people exercising together except from the same household).
4. Work and study if you can't work or learn remotely

We have also received news that all of Term 2 of Oscar's school will be remote learning, so he will be home schooled learning on the computer! So this is from Wednesday 15th April until Friday 26th June!! It will be interesting how that's going to go... we might do a few blog posts on that!

Well, back to topic for the blog post, our daily exercise trip outside...

Yesterday afternoon, it finally cleared up after 3 days with lots of rain, and we grabbed the chance of getting outside in the sunshine to get some fresh air and exercise. Oscar on his bike, and mum & dad walking, mum with her camera in tow 😃

Here are some pictures of our trip to Sanctuary Lakes - we have a nice walking/bike path all the way.

 

Outside the driveway, ready to go!

Oscar and Dad are off down the street

Oscar races ahead on the bike path in the park

Are you catching up, Mum?

We are having a little waiting break.
Mum was a bit slow, as she was taking pictures along the way.

I'm so cool on my bike 😏

Having a half-way break at Sanctuary Lakes

Bike was parked in the grass

Oscar is done with his break and ready to go

Kasper enjoying the relaxing break

Full speed ahead on the way home

Full speed around the corner!

Making sure the bike is not getting stuck in the mud.

Apart from the fun bicycle pictures, I also took some pictures of the beautiful nature and local birds on our trip.

Little ducks (Australian Coot) in the pond

Olives on olive tree in Sanctuary Lakes

One of the local birds in the wetlands, could be a White Egret.

Long grass

White Australian Ibis in the local wetlands