Banana Cake and the demise of Mr Egg

 Fridays usually sees me at the local primary school that my children attend making a super yummy lunch for all the kids. On offer today was sausage rolls and banana cake.


I managed to whip up 3 bowls of banana cake batter in the Thermie and have it all cooked in about 1 hour ready to head to school. Pretty good going I rekon!

 

 Heavy cakes like carrot and banana take forever to cook, but I have been making them in my roasting tray and they cook in about 15 minutes which was much better than up to 45. The quicker cooking time means no mega crunchy edges or top crust, its all nice and soft and squishy.....

Banana Cake

ngredients

• 180 g raw sugar
• 110 g Butter
• 2 eggs
• 3 ripe bananas broken into pieces
• 240 plain flour + 3 tsp of baking powder
• a pinch salt
• 2 tbsp milk
• 1/2 tsp Bi Carb Soda

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees

2. Line your baking dish with baking paper, just squash it in till it fits, the cake mix will sort it out!
3. Put your sugar in your bowl and mill for 10 sec on Sp9
4. Add your banana, eggs and butter and mix on sp 5 for 15 sec
5. Add the remaining ingredients and mix again on sp 5 for 15 seconds, scrap down and give another mix if needed.
6. Pour into your baking dish and cook for approx 15 minutes.
7. If no ones has eaten it by the time its cool you could ice it with a cream cheese icing or maybe lemon? I dusted with icing sugar this time.

Bye Bye Mr Egg

Happy Cooking!

Lemon Tart

Today's yumminess is thanks to a Stephanie Alexander recipe whizzed up in the Thermie. 

Thermie is such a useful tool in the kitchen, you don't have to stick to Thermie recipes like some people might think... 

This lemon tart was very quick and easy to make, it shouldn't be reserved for special occasions!

Lemon Tart

Pastry

Place 240gms of plain flour, 180gms a unsalted butter and salt into the bowl 10 sec sp 5 or until it looks like bread crumbs. (I never have unsalted butter, I just use normal butter and leave out the salt? No ones ever complained!)

Set to interval speed and add 1 tablespoon of water at a time until the dough just comes together, should be about 2 tablespoons. Don't mix for any longer than need be, less is best!

Tip it out onto the bench and knead lightly until it comes together in a big ball.

Roll it out on a sheet of baking paper until its big enough to fit in your flan tin, the type with the loose bottom. Using the baking paper to help, flip the pastry into the case and press in cutting off any excess around the top. 

Pop it into the freezer for 20 minutes. While its in there pre heat your oven to 200 degrees. 

After the 20 minutes is up, blind bake your pastry for 20 minutes, take it out of the oven then turn your oven down to 160.

Filling

Place the peel (no pith, I use a potato peeler) from 3 lemons and 250 gms of castor sugar ( I used normal raw sugar and it was fine) in the bowl and mill sp 10 for 20 or so seconds.

Insert the butterfly and add 6 eggs, give it a quick wizz on sp 4 for a few seconds. Add the juice of the 3 lemons and 160gm of cream, give it another quick mix on sp 4 10 or 15 seconds.

Bringing it together

Pour the lemon mixture into your lovely pastry case and cook for 35 - 45 minutes. Cool in the tin for at least 30 minutes before serving..

Dust with icing sugar or slather in cream...enjoy!

A quick note....

Thank you to everyone thats been following along and letting me know how much they enjoy my posts! One of my first thoughts for this blog was that I wanted to keep it as real as I could. With photography being another love of mine its could be tempting to 'food style' before snapping pics of the final product. But I think that the Internet gives us a skewed view of the world, which translates into us putting pressure on ourselves to be perfect. So in short, my benches may be messy and photos taken with my phone, but you will see things just as they are and just as we eat them. No garnish! 

Happy Cooking!

5 Seed Bread

 A lazy Sunday here....it began with the girls making us breakfast in bed and that set the tone for the rest of the day...Nothing impressive achieved, movies watched, plenty of baking done..and that's about it!

One of the things I baked today was the 5 seed bread from the EDC. It was an interesting adventure! 

To say that I love baking bread is an understatement, I have been doing it for about 15 years so I feel pretty confident when I get out the yeast ;) 

But somewhere in the middle of this recipe I thought 

'This is never going to work!'

My first problem was, there was a large amount of water in comparison to the flour, the second issue was that it was too much for the bowl and had trouble mixing ( I ended up getting in there with a spatula)  third problem was when it cooked it was WAY to big for my largest bakers tin.

But you know what? It tasted pretty damn good, and the texture was lovely even with all those seeds. 

So to save you and me and our thermies I will write the ingredients out here at 70% of the original recipe and I think that will solve the problem of the over loaded bowl and too big for the tin.

• 350gm of water
• 2 tsp of yeast ( or a smidge less, whatever!)
• 350gm of bakers flour
• 3/4 tsp of salt, just roughly is fine
• 35 gm of rolled oats
• 20gms each of sesame seeds, linseeds, sunflower seeds, poppy seeds, pumpkin seeds
• 20 gms of honey
• 20 gms of olive oil

Normally I wouldn't use olive oil in a sandwich type loaf (butter all the way!) reserving it for focaccia or pizza dough but in this case it helped keep the bread strong enough to handle all those seeds.

So, give it a go if your into a grainy bread. Its as good as any you will buy (probably better) and a whole lot cheaper!

Creamy Honey Mustard Chicken with Rice (DAIRY FREE)

 Having a dairy free lad poses its challenges, as you either know or can imagine. 

The thing I miss the most is creamy sauces for pasta or rice but I have been trying to solve that problem.

I guess even if your ok with dairy, heavy cream sauces can leave you feeling yucky and if your watching your weight cream is probably something you would avoid! So this could be for you too.

But before we get to that recipe lets talk about garlic.

My lovely friend Gen (Hi Gen!) dropped in yesterday with a bag of some home grown garlic. I remembered having seen somewhere that Thermie does a great job of peeling garlic...so I went in search...and found this guide.  I went ahead and gave it a go with Gens Garlic and it worked a treat! I popped all the cloves in a jar and covered them with olive oil. Now they are ready to go whenever I need them. My only suggestion would be to put the timer on, I got a little distracted so my cloves got a little bashed up, but hey, they're still great!

Ok, so heres my recipe for Creamy Honey Mustard Chicken with Rice. Which I must say I am most pleased with! Another cheap and healthy meal to add to our list.

Ok Ok here it is...

Weigh 400gms of some rice you like into the rice basket (I like Medium grain) and give it a wash.

Add 900gms of water to the bowl, add the rice basket and give it a quick wizz on sp 5.

Cook 20min/varoma/sp2 with the Varoma in position

While thats cooking chop and add 4 chicken thighs to the top layer of the varoma, then chop your veg and put them on the bottom layer. Today I used carrot, zucchini and broccoli, you can use whatever takes your fancy or tortures your kids the best ;)

So when thats done, just check the chicken is cooked to be on the safe side, if its not give it another couple of minutes.

Remove the Varoma and put to the side to stay warm, remove the rice basket and pop the rice into your thermoserver.

Tip out the water in the bowl into another container to be used later.

Put an onion and a clove or 2 of garlic into your bowl and chop sp 5. Add a glug of oil and 1/2 a tsp of tumeric. Cook on 100 degrees for 3 minutes.

Add, 50gms of honey, 40gms of mustard, 60gms of cashews, 1 tbsp of stock paste and the reserved water. 

Wizz altogether on sp9 for 1 minute. Done.

Put rice, chicken and veg in your bowl and pour over some creamy sauce.

Thats it! 

Happy Cooking!

Man Risotto aka Tomato and Chorizo Risotto

Risotto used to be something I made as a treat.  All that stirring. Blerk! Since Thermie arrived, risotto has become something I make when I can't be bothered making any thing or there's nothing in the fridge to make anything from.
After a big weekend making coffee for a local cycling event I found myself not knowing (or caring that much! ) what to make us for dinner tonight.  With not much in the fridge I went for an old favorite that has not many ingredients and a flexible recipe so its is easy to make something that will please.

Chop 1 onion and a couple of cloves of garlic in Thermie then add a glug of oil and cook 3 min /varoma/sp 1.
Put in butterfly. Add 400gm of rice (I use medium grain for everything! )  and a chunk of butter. Cook 2min/100°/reverse/Speed 1
Next add half a jar of spag sauce and top up with water to the 2 litre mark. Add 2 or so tablespoons of chicken stock (I use massel), a chopped chorizo and whatever else you've got going. ..it was peas and parsley today!
Cook 17 min/100°/reverse/speed 1.
Let it sit for a few minutes then serve it up with some parmesan cheese. 

So. Damn. Easy.

Steak Pie

Meet Mr Steak Pie, I met him through the EDC (Everyday Cookbook) where he goes under the name Aussie Meat Pie. Sadly, he is no longer with us.....

A bit silly I know! I gave my children 2 googly eyes each and they ran around the house making everyday things come alive! Sometimes when your a non TV watching family you have to get a bit creative ;)  

So, I gave this recipe a try again using rump steak I had found on special. 

I was feeding 7 so I doubled the recipe in a round about fashion...not quite twice the meat and I added extra tablespoon of cornflour because I wanted it thicker. I didn't use the 2 TABLESPOONS??? of Vegemite I used about 1/4 of a teaspoon instead which was much better for our tastebuds.I also put in a big blob of tomato sauce, thats not in the recipe but I think its a great addition. I used thermie shortcrust pastry for the base and a bought sheet of puff for the lid because I had no ice to make my own!

I served it with scalloped potatoes (Mr Dairy Free had his own baked potato) baked the regular way..Sliced potato, onion, sprinkle with good chicken stock, black pepper and pour over 600ml of cream, cover with foil, bake at 180 for at least an hour......and of course some regular steamed veg.

It scored a 7/7 (7 people ate it, 7 people liked it!) 

I don't know why...but I love a good pie!

Happy Cooking!

Spag Bog and our menu.

It doesn't look that great.....but it was delicious!

We don't often make Spag Bog here. The kids don't really like it?? But tonight, it was quick, easy and I didn't have to think to much about it!  I checked out Quirkys recipe and mostly followed it.
I made these changes..

• I used minced beef
• no zucchini, used green capsicum and dried herbs
• I added the semi dried tomatoes in the same step as the veg so they got all chopped up. 
• no olives, no red wine
• I added extra water because it all seemed to thick to stir about and cook properly, and I still stopped it and gave it a mix with my trusty spatula a couple of times
• I also cooked it for an extra 15 minutes and threw in some baby spinach that needed to be used.

 The verdict was that we should defiantly have it again!! Lucky because it made the full 2 litres, which left about half for another meal!!



I was asked recently to share how I do my meal planning. It has made a big difference to the way I shop and makes things run much smoother! It also makes it easier to think in bulk when buying.

Firstly we all decide what we would like to eat for the next 2 weeks. Everyone gets a say and I make sure the kids all get at least one thing they have suggested. I also ask for suggestions for their lunch boxes too.
As I write the meals down I also write what I need to buy to make that meal. I have one column for Aldi, one for Safeway. By keeping it all in the one notebook I can use it to look back on when I need some inspiration and carry it to the supermarket with me. Sounds a big daggy, but it works a treat! 
The notebook hangs about in the kitchen so when we are deciding whats for tea, we look at the book and see what the options are and I can plan ahead if need be.......
Here's this fortnights menu plan

• Meatloaf with mash and veg                                              
• Steak Pie and Scalloped Potatoes and veg
• Pumpkin Soup and bread
• Veg Curry and Rice
• Honey Mustard Chicken with rice
• Chicken Soup and bread
• Beef and Blackbean Stirfry
• Risotto
• Pasta of some sort
• Mexican beans with poached eggs on toast
• Muesli Bars
• Lemon Slice
• Apricot Balls
• Fruit Loaf
• Sausage rolls

Are you the meal planning type? or the winging it type??