Choc Chip Biscuits & Chickpea Curry

Thermie Recipe #1 - Chocolate Chip Biscuits
Yesterday I decided that I wanted some easy to bake biscuits. I found this Choc Chip Biscuits recipe on A girl, a guy, furkids and food. I haven't made anything from this site before, but I will definitely be trying some of their other recipes!

The biscuits are gluten free, I used rapadura sugar, macadamia oil and dairy free chocolate chips, so they are a healthy-ish version of a Chocolate Chip Biscuit. I made them exactly as the recipe states and they were delicious! Crunchy on the outside and soft and chewy in the middle. Blair and Shane both loved them and needless to say, they didn't last very long.

Thermie Recipe #2 - Chickpea & Cashew Nut Curry
I still hadn't been to the supermarket so we literally had nothing in the fridge! I had a couple of cans of chickpeas in the pantry so I decided to try the Chickpea & Cashew Nut Curry in Tenina's Spin a Dinner iPhone App. This was the first recipe I had made from the Spin a Dinner App.

I mostly made the curry as the recipe suggested but had to make a few changes due to my lack of ingredients.
In Step 1, I put a small amount of ground ginger seeing as I didn't have any fresh. I used a small amount of ground chili because I didn't have any fresh. I used olive oil instead of the peanut oil. I also threw in a couple of handfuls of cashews at this point.
In Step 3, I had to omit the ground coriander because I didn't have any.
In Step 4, I only had a 260g can of coconut milk, so I added water to make up to the 400ml.

This was the second time that I had tried a chickpea curry in the Thermie and the second time that I have ended up with chickpea curry mush! I'm not sure why, because I followed the cooking directions as the recipe stated. Any suggestions? And there are some burn marks on the bottom of the Thermie bowl :(

Mush aside, it was a really tasty dish. We had some left over fried rice, so I served it with the curry, which increased the veggie content

Sorry, no photo of the curry mush :)



I have lots of eggs that need to be used up over the next few day so I will be looking for some eggy Thermie recipes.

I am a bit excited, I am going to get my hair done tonight. It will be the first time I will have been away from Cody since she was born and I am looking forward to some me time!

First day of Thermie Blogging

So for my first blog day (yesterday) we made 3 things in the Thermie.

Thermomix recipe #1 - Hot Chocolate
The first thing I made during the day was the Hot Chocolate on page 32 of the Thermomix Everyday cooking for every family (EDC) recipe book. I really felt like something sweet, quick & easy.

I am currently avoiding cow's milk at the moment (I'm not sure if it is affecting Cody through my breastmilk). So I made the Hot Chocolate using Quirky Cooking's Rice-Almond Milk recipe. My husband Shane tends to have a dairy intolerance, so he avoids it most of the time. The Rice-Almond Milk is the perfect alternative to cow's milk and so easy to make in the Thermie.

Since buying my Thermie, Quirky Cooking has been a place of cooking inspiration for me. As I mentioned yesterday, I have never really enjoyed cooking dinners and Shane has always been the cook in our house, but now with the Thermie I have been cooking dinners much more frequently.

Back to the Hot Chocolate....I halved the recipe because I was just making it for myself, using the Rice-Almond Milk, Maple syrup (25g) instead of sugar and added a little cornflour to thicken it up. Well it definitely did that! It was extremely rich, sweet and thick, but a little too much for me. I could only drink about 3/4 of the cup. Next time I would use less cocoa, less sweetener and leave out the cornflour. I will let you know how it goes next time I try it :)

Thermomix recipe #2 - Vegetarian Thermomix Fried Rice
The second thing I made was dinner. I didn't have a lot in the fridge so I decided to make Quirky Cooking 'Fried' Rice but made a few adaptations. Here is the original recipe.

This is the version I made for us last night:

Vegetarian Thermomix Fried Rice

Ingredients:

200g raw basmati rice

260g tin coconut milk

630g water

1-2 carrots chopped into small pieces

Small head of broccoli florets

1-2 squash chopped into small pieces

250g firm Tofu chopped into small cubes

3 eggs beaten

 

1. Put basket into Thermomix bowl, and weigh rice into the basket.

2. Remove the basket from the bowl, and pour coconut milk and water into The bowl

3. Rinse the basket of rice under the tap, then place the basket back into the Thermomix bowl. Put the lid on, place Varoma on top, and start cooking for 20 minutes at Varoma temperature, speed 4.

4. While rice is cooking, chop up Tofu and veggies, putting them into the Varoma as you chop, hard veggies first, then softer veggies & tofu.

5. With about 5 minutes to go, line the top Varoma tray with a piece of wet baking paper, and pour in the eggs. Replace the lid, and leave to steam.

6. Check after 20 minutes to make sure they're all cooked.

7. Remove the Varoma and place the lid underneath. Remove the rice basket using the spatula, and tip the rice into the Thermoserver. Add the tofu and veggies. Slice the egg up in the tray and pour in with the rice. Mix together gently, and serve.

Can be served with some tamari sauce / soy sauce / sweet chili sauce.

 

This is such a great all-in-one recipe inspired by Quirky Jo.

 

 

Thermomix recipe #3 - Five Seed Bread

Shane actually made our third Thermomix recipe for the day. We realised in the evening that we didn't have any bread left for the morning, so Shane decided to have a go at making the Five Seed Bread on page 114 of the EDC. The only substitution he made was Chia seeds instead to the poppy seeds because we didn't have any.

 

The bread came out fantastic! I had some for lunch today with some butter on it. It was really nice but my only issue was that I found it quite sweet so next time I would try it with only half of the honey and see how that goes.

 

So there you have it. In one day we used our Thermie to make a drink, a main meal and a loaf of bread.

 

I will try to post some photos later.

 

Stay tuned tomorrow for some yummy chocolate chip cookies!

Welcome to my blog

Welcome to my blog!

Please bear with me, it is a work in progress.

I have dabbled in the blog world before but didn't find something that excited me enough to continue writing, but my new found love of the Thermomix has inspired me to start this blog.

The aim of this blog is to challenge me to make at least one Thermomix recipe a day and I will write about it here. When I cook, I like to tweak, review and healthify different recipes, so part of the adventure for me is playing around with the recipes and putting my own spin on them. I also hope that this blog will encourage me to branch out and explore lots of different Thermomix recipes.

I will start off with a little bit about myself:

I am a 29 year-old Mum of a nearly 3-year-old boy, Blair, and a 5-week-old girl, Cody (so this blog really will be a challenge for me!), and I have a gorgeous husband, Shane.

We have (stupidly) just moved house, so we are still in the process of unpacking and trying to settle in, but with two small kids and a very busy husband, it is taking a l-o-n-g time!

We have been trying to lead a healthier lifestyle and a few months ago, I convinced my husband that we needed a Thermomix. It was one of the best decisions we made!

I love baking but I have never really enjoyed everyday cooking. The Thermomix has made it so easy for me to enjoy cooking healthy meals for my family. It also makes it very easy to prepare lots of foods from scratch, avoiding a lot of the chemicals, preservatives, additives and artificial colours and flavours that are in so many pre-prepared foods available today. This made us think about what we were actually putting into our bodies and we made the decision to try to avoid all of the nasties in processed foods.

So join me on my food/cooking/healthy/Thermomix adventure.....

P.S. As I am typing this, Cody just vomitted right down my top. The pleasures of having a baby ;)