Too easy chocolate cake with chocolate ganache

Too easy chocolate cake with chocolate ganache

It was my son's 7th birthday today, and we were having the grandparents, aunty, uncle and cousins over for birthday cake and coffee. I decided to make the BCB Too easy chocolate cake as his birthday cake. I hadn't made it before so I wasn't sure how big the cake would turn out. I used a spring form tin and made one batch. It turned out about the right thickness for one layer of a 2 layer cake that could be filled with jam and cream, so I made a second one.

The making of the cake was as described - too easy! Basically, just melt the butter, then add in the rest of the ingredients and mix it together, then bake. Doesn't get much easier than that! I must admit, I much prefer cake recipes that require melted butter rather than creaming the butter. Even in the thermie I find that i need to scrape the butter down multiple times, which can get a bit cumbersome when you have to keep waiting for the arms to release the lid!

Once the 2 cakes were baked and cooled, I sliced a little of the top of the base piece, so it was nice and flat. I warmed up a bit of strawberry jam and spread that over to base piece and then added some fresh whipped cream over the jam.

To make the ganache I semi-followed the BCB recipe. However, from previous experience I knew the resulting ganache was quite runny, and doesn't set firm on a cake. I use the method of the ganache on the chip, but the quantities are slightly different, in order to have a firm-set ganache, similar to the one you would get on a supermarket mud cake. I always use the ratio of half cream to the amount of chocolate. In this case I used 150g of dark cooking chocolate and 75 grams of pure cream. The thermie sorted out the rest - resulting in a perfect ganache that poured nicely onto the cake and set in the fridge. I also garnished with some fresh strawberries.

The cake was quite tasty, not too rich, although I did find it a little dry. I made it last night, and then because I needed to put it in the fridge, this may have caused the dryness. The recipe does suggest to serve the cake warm. Next time I make this I might try it when we can eat it still warm with some basic chocolate icing made with icing sugar and cocoa.

Happy thermomixing!

Butter chicken

Butter chicken

Tonight's dinner was the butter chicken from the recipe chip. I was actually in the middle of making some cakes and sweet buns for my son's 7th birthday tomorrow, so I started making this later than I usually would. It was quite a quick recipe, with not a lot of hands on time.

This is the first time I have made this version of butter chicken. Previously I have made the Skinnymixers Butter chicken. It was actually the second thing I ever made in my thermomix, after vegetable stock! Due to how popular the Skinnymixers version was, I decided to give it a go, and it definitely lived up to all the hype.

The BCB version definitely has less steps and takes less time to make overall. It also has less spices than the Skinnymixers recipe. Admittedly, I did leave out the chilli powder because the kids would be less inclined to eat it.

The overall result was a bit disappointing. I just feel it didn't have enough flavour, it was very bland. It made a lot of sauce, in relation to the amount of chicken. I have frozen the sauce we didn't use, and will just cook up some diced chicken and add it to heated through sauce. However I will probably have to tweak it a little bit with a few extra spices before I use it. Unfortunately I don't think this recipe is really for me. Can't win them all!

Happy thermomixing!

Chilli con carne with boiled rice

Chilli con carne and boiled rice

For dinner last night we had the chilli con carne, served with boiled rice. Since the kids were having it, I did reduce the amount of red chilli quite a bit, only using 1 long red chilli, with the seeds and membranes scraped out. I also didn't add any chilli powder. When i was gathering all the spices out of the pantry, I also realised that I didn't have any coriander left, so I ended up using garam marsala instead, which has a few extra spices, including cinnamon, so I left out the cinnamon stick from the recipe too.

This was actually the first time I had ever minced meat using the thermomix! It worked out quite well. The recipes instructs you to use partially frozen cubed beef. I put it in the freezer for about 30 minutes before I started cooking, and it was perfect. After mincing it with the turbo function, the meat pieces were just a bit bigger that regular minced meat. At the end of cooking it was just the right texture, and very similar to the picture in the recipe book. If you have ever tried cooking actual mince in the thermomix, you would know it is quite easily turned into a puree, so this is definitely the way I will go from now on.

Once I had made the chilli con carne, I put it into the thermoserver while I prepared the rice. I have a confession to make...Since getting my thermomix 7 months ago, I have only done rice in it once. It was a disaster! I am not entirely sure what I did wrong but the middle of the simmering basket didn't seem to get cooked, so there was a big chunk of uncooked rice sitting there. So ever since that incident I have been cooking rice in my decor microwave rice cooker! So last night, I decided to give it another go!

There are a couple of recipes for rice on the chip - the automated one, which for some reason takes 28 minutes, and the recipe from the book, which takes only 20 for long grain rice. I usually only have basmati and arborio rice in the house, so I used basmati. I did read before I started the recipe that basmati only needs 15 minutes cooking time, but when I started the cooking I forgot to alter the time. The rice ended up a little bit overcooked, so I will remember that for next time! Aside from that, there wasn't any uncooked rice in the middle this time!

Boiled rice

I think the important things to remember are to rinse your rice well, and make sure there is enough water to reach right up into the centre of the bowl once the blades are spinning at speed 4. I did reduce the amount of rice down as we usually only need 3/4 cup of uncooked rice for the 4 of us.

Overall this was a very tasty dish, and I will definitely do it again. It made quite a lot though, so I have put half of it in the freezer for one of those nights I don't feel like cooking!

Happy thermomixing!

Spreadable butter

Spreadable butter - Quirky Cooking

I generally keep a small amount of butter out of the fridge for spreading on sandwiches. However, now that the weather is cooling down, even this is too firm to spread without ripping holes in my lovely, soft, homemade bread! So I decided to give spreadable butter a go.

I have the Thermomix cookbook "Quirky Cooking" by Jo Whitton, which has a recipe for spreadable butter, and this is what I have used this time. The reason I did this one, rather than the BCB version, is that last time I tried the BCB recipe I found it was still a bit too firm when stored in the fridge. Rather than try to play around with the amount of oil required, I figured I would give the Quirky recipe a go first. There is a similar recipe on the Quirky cooking website, which you can find here. I used store bought butter as I hadn't come across any cream on sale to make butter from scratch.

It was so quick and easy to make. I was surprised at how easily the oil and water combined with the butter. It was quite a runny consistency when it was first made, but I put it in the fridge overnight and it firmed up to a spreadable consistency. From the 230g of butter I got about 600g of spreadable butter.

Butter after combining

The oil I used to make it was grapeseed, as this was the lightest flavoured oil I had in my cupboard. You could use macadamia or avocado oil. Olive oil tends to be too strongly flavoured, so I would avoid using that.

Spreads perfectly

Happy thermomixing!

Bircher muesli

Bircher muesli with plain yoghurt

I am a big fan of bircher muesli, or overnight oats - anything that can be semi-prepared, or completely prepared the night before, and all that is left to do is make my coffee in the morning.

With this recipe, I only prepared the oats the night before, and left the rest for the morning. The remainder of the recipe required chopping nuts and fruit, which would have made a lot of noise, and the kids were already in bed when I remembered to make the oats last night. In hindsight, I could have measured out the ingredients and put them into a zip lock bag, so all that was needed in the morning was to tip it in and chop. It didn't take too long though.

I did change the fruit and nuts a little bit, to use what I had in the cupboard. I added dried apricots, a dried fig and cranberries. For the nuts I had almonds, cashews and walnuts.

I served the bircher muesli with a few dollops of the plain yoghurt I had separated yesterday from my fruit batch, and a fresh strawberry. It was a tasty breakfast, and because of the protein from the nuts it kept me full for ages. I work from 9am until 1pm most days, so I don't get a break to have something to eat. Usually I am ravenous by about 10am, and have to quickly eat a muesli bar or piece of fruit, but today I found I wasn't hungry at all, until I got home from work. Thankfully I had my leftover risotto to reheat! Yum!

I made half a batch of the bircher muesli because when I got up everyone else was already eating their breakfast. I stored the rest in a bowl in the fridge, and it looks like it has lasted pretty well - the apple hasn't browned, so I should be able to have the leftovers tomorrow morning. I will definitely be making this one again.

Happy thermomixing!

Mushroom Risotto

Mushroom Risotto

There is a good chance that if you have been to a thermomix demo, then you have tried the Mushroom Risotto. It is one of the meals (the other being the Chicken Veloute meal) that they make as the main dish.  Otherwise known as "Hot Wet Rice"... if you feel like a laugh have a look at this video. Warning there is a bit of coarse language so don't watch near kids! And ignore the tip about the tea towel. That is no longer recommended by Thermomix.

This recipe is really quick to prepare and make, so it is a good one for those nights when you don't have much time or energy to cook. It also has a variation of chicken and pea, for those that don't like mushrooms. I haven't tried that version as yet.

The best thing about making risotto in the thermomix is that you can usually prepare any ingredients that need slicing (the mushrooms in this case) while the eschalot/onion is sautéing. Then its a matter of adding in the ingredients, and leaving it to do its thing for 13 minutes. No stirring at the stove and sweating away like you would usually have to do for a risotto! Brilliant!

This recipe uses the butterfly to mix the risotto. When I first got my thermomix I had a bit of trouble getting the butterfly on, and to stay on, but now I know a few little tips. If you look on the underside of the blades, one of the blades has a thermomix symbol on it (see picture below). This is the highest blade. The butterfly should be attached so it is sitting to the left of this blade. Put it on and twist clockwise slightly, then give it a gentle pull, it should stay on. I must admit, every time I use the butterfly, I always sing Beyonce..."to the left, to the left...". Is it just me? Probably!

The blade symbol on the bottom of the blades

Happy thermomixing!

Yoghurt with mixed berry coulis

Yoghurt with mixed berry coulis

There are so many different methods to make yoghurt, and I have tried a lot of them since getting my thermomix. I used to make yoghurt with my Easiyo yoghurt maker before that, but I do prefer to know what I am putting in it, and making it from scratch is a lot cheaper. Especially since you only need to keep as little as a 1/4 of a cup of your batch to use as your next starter, depending on which method you follow.

The TM5 comes with 3 automated recipes, one of these being for yoghurt. It takes 8 hours, with the mixture being kept at a constant temperature of 37 degrees for most of that time. The resulting yoghurt is more of a pouring yoghurt, suitable for putting on muesli, or adding to smoothies. However, because it takes 8 hours, I can't use my TM for anything else while it is incubating.

It was only a few days ago I read the recipe for yoghurt in the basic cookbook - the manual version. This required incubating in the thermoserver, which is much better. There are also some variations at the bottom of the recipe that I had never noticed before: Sweetened yoghurt; creamy yoghurt; fruit yoghurt and thick set yoghurt. I decided to try out the thick set sweetened yoghurt, and also to make some mixed berry coulis to make a flavoured yoghurt, using the fruit coulis recipe, also from the BCB.

The recipe for thick set yoghurt said to leave the yoghurt to incubate for 5 to 7 hours. I checked it after 5 hours and it was still very runny. At this stage it was already 10.30pm. It was a very cold night in Perth last night, so I decided there would be no problems leaving it out overnight wrapped in a blanket and seeing how thick it was in the morning. This worked out really well. The yoghurt was really thick, as you can see here.

Plain yoghurt - thick set

I made the coulis this afternoon. The coulis doesn't have as much sugar as jam, so its not really something you can store in the fridge for a long period. I store it in a glass jar in the fridge, and it will be good for about a week.

Fruit coulis - mixed berry

Once the yoghurt had cooled down in the fridge, I split it into 2 containers, one for plain sweetened, and the other I would be able to flavour with the coulis. I probably only needed to add in about a third of the coulis to the 500g of yoghurt. I mixed it together well, to make a pink yoghurt. It thins the yoghurt down a little bit. If you wanted to you could chop up some fresh berries and mix them through as well. Another option could be just to keep the yoghurt and coulis separate and swirl it through in a bowl when you are about to eat a serve.

We do go through yoghurt quite quickly, so I know the remaining coulis won't go to waste. It can also be used as a sauce on desserts or over icecream.

Overall, I was quite happy with the outcome of this yoghurt, although I do think it is a bit fiddly due to the heating up, waiting for it to cool, then heating again. There are a few other faster ways of making yoghurt to a similar consistency, however I will go through those the next time I make yoghurt...which will probably be in the next four days or so!

Happy thermomixing!

Home made bread

Hi-rise white loaf

Okay, so this recipe isn't in the Basic Cook Book, but it is on a Thermomix based blog, Thermomumma, and of all the bread recipes I have tried, this is my absolute favourite. You can find the recipe for it here. All hail Lailah and her magnificent loaf!!! Lailah's facebook page can be found here.

This bread smells devine, is so easy to make, and I have never had a fail with it. Sometimes I add a mixture of seeds to it for a multigrain loaf, still using the white bakers flour. I just add the seeds in before mixing and kneading the dough. I don't bother with soaking the seed mixture I use. Generally I add about a couple of tablespoons of each type of seed (my usual suspects being sunflower, pepita (pumpkin seeds), chia and flaxseeds. The kneading process spreads the seeds through nice and evenly.

There are a few suggestions of how to prove the dough in Lailah's recipe. Today it was quite cold in Perth, so to get my dough going I ended up putting it on top of the dryer and turning it on for a little while. It seemed to work pretty well. Near a heater would work as well. Just remember to cover it with cling wrap so it doesn't dry out. Spraying the cling wrap with oil before placing over the dough will stop the wrap from sticking to it as it rises.

Dough before first 15 minute prove

Dough after 15 minutes proving

The tin I use for the loaf is a Mackie's tin. These tins are commercial quality, and should last a lifetime if you look after them properly. They are non stick, so there is no need to oil or flour the tin, unless you are using it to bake a cake or if the dough is more of a batter consistency. My preference would then be to line it with baking paper, so that it doesn't need to be completely submerged in water to wash it. If I find the tin gets any baked on bits, i just wipe it off with a damp dish cloth and stick it in the oven while its still warm to dry the tin out properly.

Dough before final 1 hour prove

Dough after 1 hour proving

There is also a lid available for the tin, to make a square loaf. I haven't got around to buying one as yet. When I want to make a square loaf, I wedge a large baking tray between to top oven shelf and the top of the bread tin. This way the bread will end up with a flat top, as opposed to the hi-rise loaf I have made today.

Slicing a loaf by hand can be a little tricky, but there are bread slicing guides available quite cheaply on ebay. However with a bit of practice, you get better at it! Using a sharp serrated knife or sharp bread knife is best. I prefer to make my loaves in the afternoon/evening, then I will leave it overnight on a cooling rack with a food net cover over it to keep the bugs off. In the morning the crust is nice a firm and much easier to slice.

Storage of bread can be tricky, especially when it is quite big. When I make a square loaf, I have found that the largest zip lock bags will be big enough, and as long as you squeeze out all the air when you seal it, it remains fresh for at least 2 days (if it lasts that long!). I also try to save any plastic bags and the little closing tags from store bought bread to keep larger loaves in.

I really love making bread! Its one of those things I would never have done before owning a thermomix. It is so easy, so if you haven't done it yet, please give this recipe a go. You won't be disappointed!

Happy thermomixing!

Pasta e Fagioli (Pasta & Beans)

I have often flicked past this one in the book, I'm not sure why, but I thought I would give it a go tonight. The ingredients required are quite minimal, and most of them would be things I would have in the cupboard or crisper, so its a great recipe for day before shopping day. The beans in the recipe are borlotti beans, but you could probably use cannelini beans if you didn't have any borlotti in the cupboard.

The start of the recipe requires grating parmesan and setting aside. I must say, I really love grating fresh parmesan cheese from the block. None of that horrible pre-grated smelly socks grated stuff. My dad actually thought he didn't like parmesan cheese because he had only ever had/smelled the nasty pre-grated one. He tried the freshly grated one when he came over one day, as he was trying a pasta I had made. Lo and behold, he actually does like parmesan!

Perfectly grated parmesan

I added quite a small chilli to the dish, and scraped out the seeds, since the kids were having this for dinner. When it came to adding the water, it did seem like an awful lot, considering the water isn't going to be drained at the end. But after cooking, and resting in the tm bowl for 5 minutes as suggested, the liquid thickened up quite a bit. One of the tips on the recipe was to add up to 500g of pasta, for a thicker sauce. I didn't really need that much pasta, so I used the 300g as stated in the original recipe.

Overall, I was quite happy with the result. Its a great recipe for those nights when you don't feel like pfaffing about with lots of different ingredients. It also has provided us with leftovers for lunch tomorrow!

Pasta e Fagioli

Happy thermomixing!

Beef Stroganoff

Every now and then I decide to skip a week of grocery shopping to try to use up food from the freezer/pantry/crisper and save a bit of money and avoid wastage. This is one of those weeks! It was a stew kind of day - so I went through the BCB and decided to try out the beef stroganoff. I have used numerous other recipes on the stove top in the past, and I always find that when I add the sour cream, even if i turn off the heat, it tends to split and looks really unappetising. The picture of the meal in the BCB looked lovely and smooth, so I thought I would give it a go.

I only had some beef rump, where the recipe called for beef tenderloin fillet. I figured it might work out okay, so I sliced it up and started the recipe. The longest part of the preparation of this dish was the slicing of the button mushrooms. I love that I don't need to dice up onions anymore, I am really sensitive to them and my eyes water for ages, so being able to peel the skin off, halve it and chuck it in the TM bowl is great. Just remember when you scrape down the sides, don't stick your head right over to see what you are doing! Otherwise your eyes will water a lot! I learnt this the hard way haha....

I got to the stage of adding all the ingredients and leaving it to cook. While this was happening I was able to clean up the majority of the dishes and put away the unused ingredients, so the kitchen was pretty tidy. This saves me a lot of time later on so I have more time to spend with the kids before bed for extra cuddles!

To my surprise, the end result of the dish was great! No splitting of the sour cream, first time ever. The sauce was really delicious. The meat was ok, some bits were a bit tough, so next time I will definitely use the suggested cut of meat in the recipe. I served it with mashed potato, which I made the old fashioned way on the stove, since the TM was making the stroganoff. I did this so it would all be ready at the same time, being a school night. It is easy though to pop the stroganoff in a preheated thermoserver while you make the mashed potato afterwards, if you had a bit more time.

Beef stroganoff

Happy thermomixing!

Lazy Porridge

Now it is getting a bit colder in the mornings, its nice to have some creamy porridge for breakfast with a bit of fruit...and the obligatory nespresso of course. This morning I used the chip recipe to cook porridge for myself and the boys. Its so easy to do, just whack the ingredients in and turn the dial, simple as that!

Ingredients pre-cook

Since I usually just make the porridge for myself and the boys, I do half the recipe. This is the good thing about following the chip, you can use it as a guide and make little changes if you wish. So if there is a certain ingredient you don't like, or have an allergy to, and it doesn't make a huge difference to the recipe you can substitute it. Or, as I have done this morning, halved the recipe.

The usual rule for making half a recipe is to decrease the cooking time by 20%. Its easy to alter, just tap the time button and decrease the cooking time, and continue as normal with the temperature and speed as suggested on the chip.

The porridge is lovely and creamy and cooked just perfectly. I usually add either banana or some diced apple and a little bit of brown sugar or honey. Sometimes I add the banana with the ingredients and cook it into the porridge. Its also lovely to add the diced apple and a bit of cinnamon to the mixture instead of putting it on top raw and the end. The boys loved the porridge today. Its definitely easier than making it the traditional way on the stove top, standing there mixing, and even sometimes accidentally burning the milk on the bottom of the pan when getting distracted (I may or may not have done this a few times!).

Cooked porridge

The final product

Clean up is easy too. The Thermomix is "self-cleaning", simply by filling approximately halfway and adding a small drop of detergent, then doing a couple of bursts on turbo, most of the food will come off. Depending on what you are making you can then rinse it out, dry with a tea towel and continue on with your cooking. Most of the time though I do take the bowl apart and give the blades a good clean with a bottle cleaning brush.

And rule number one of thermomixing...always put the bowl and blades back together before putting them back into the base unit!

Happy thermomixing!

Welcome to my Thermomix world!

Hello, and welcome to my blog! I have introduced myself a little in my profile, but thought I might as well expand on how I came about getting a thermomix...I must admit I am one to be taken in by new technologies (I have had a fitbit for 2 years, back when no one knew what it was and I was constantly explaining to people what the thing around my wrist was...no I'm not on parole!!!).

I had seen the previous model, the TM31, around a year before I purchased my own Thermomix. I was pretty impressed, but couldn't justify spending that amount of money back then. Then in September 2014 when I heard about the TM5, with the fancy touch screen and recipe chips that provided guided cooking and even automated recipes, I was convinced I needed this machine! I will admit my husband rolled his eyes and called it a $2000 blender, but I was determined I was going to get one. So I booked in a demo, and signed up to receive my Thermomix...in 6 to 8 weeks! It was a long wait, but with a trip to Bali already planned during that time, it did make the time go a bit faster.

I finally got my machine at the start of December, which was great, it allowed me to experiment with making all sorts of treats for Christmas gifts. I also experimented with various bread recipes, which was an advantage on Christmas day when my family usually has a breakfast.

The TM5 and all attachments/utensils

All the Thermomix machines come with various attachments, including the Varoma (steaming bowl and tray), simmering basket, measuring cup, spatula (also removes the simmering basket) and The Basic Cook Book, and recipe chip which contains all the recipes in the book. To start with, I had a go of some of the recipes in the book, using the chip. I then graduated on to looking through the Thermomix recipe community and trying recipes on there. I found some other websites such as the The Road To Loving My Thermo Mixer (TRTLMT); Thermofun and various facebook pages that I have followed. Once I had a bit of practice using the machine, I felt ready to get back into cooking from my own favourite recipe books as well, converting the recipes to use the Thermomix to either prepare or cook the meals. Now I was getting the hang of it! I did have a few "nailed it!" moments here and there, but it is all a learning curve.

I was flicking through my Basic Cook Book (BCB) the other day, and came across a few recipes that I had overlooked. I decided to try one. It was the recipe for vegetarian sausage rolls. I had read on a few facebook thermie related pages that they were good, but when I read the ingredients I wasn't convinced.  However, I will give anything a try once. So I made them, and was completely blown away! They were so identical to a regular meat filled sausage roll, there is no way anyone would guess they were a vegetarian version. So it got me to thinking...what other little treasures have I missed? Only one way to find out!

So here I am, about to embark on cooking my way through Thermomix's The Basic Cook Book. I may occasionally blog about other recipes I have tried on the way. Some things are too good not to share!