Katsmixing Things

05/01/2021

Wait...I can't believe it has been 6 months since my last post!!!

Wow.

What have I done since then? Well, for a lot of it, I was up to my elbows in sourdough. I was making over 40 loaves a week for people and it was selling like the proverbial hotcakes. I might revisit this sourdough malarkey one day because I do love making bread but I had to take a break to make a different kind of bread...if you know what I mean...lol $$$

So now it's holidays and time to bake and make again. We are about to embark on our annual camping trip and need after dinner treats to take. What should one take for desert when camping for a week? It can't melt, can't take up too much room in the car fridge? FUDGE!! of course :-)

So, tonight I have whipped up a chocolate fudge - which by the way, the leftovers in the bowl must not go to waste and makes THE BEST hot chocolate in town! and of course everyone's favourite Lemon Meringue Fudge.

Fudge is hands down, the easiest and most camp friendly desert around...and it lasts for days (if you hide it from the kids 🤣 ). Get your eyeballs around this deliciousness! I even got a nice abstract swirl on top of the chocolate fudge!

Happy mixing :-)

30/07/2020

If you like salt, you might like to try this.

Mushroom salt is something that I always have in my herbs and spices draw. It adds a depth of flavour to dishes. I add it to my bolognese, stew and I love adding it to my gravy. These are only a few things I do.

Give it a go this weekend, takes less than a minute to whip it up in your thermie.

MOREISH MUSHROOM SALT! You know me, I am all about maximum results in minimum time! How can I get the most delicious dish possible, the easiest way possible? One of my tricks is definitely having ‘flavour makers’ up my sleeve – a sauce or a sprinkle (homemade of course!) that turn a dish from zero to hero, adding an injection of flavour with very little effort. One of my go-tos is my delicious Mushroom Salt - it takes less than a minute to make and will store in the pantry indefinitely, meaning you can always have some on hand to jazz things up, turning a boring meal into something really satisfying. Add it to literally anything savoury, both while cooking and at the end to season. It also makes a beautiful homemade gift! https://www.alycealexandra.com/thermomix/2019/3/16/thermomix-mushroom-salt?rq=mushroom%20salt

17/07/2020

Evening all,

Apologies for the lack of interaction in the last week, have been busy making a ton of sourdough. Sales of this stuff has been insane, I can't keep up with the demand!

Needless to say, I haven't posted bc that is all I have been doing. Until tonight :-)

Tonight's dinner was from the cookidoo collection "Fakeaway Favourites"...Kung Pao chicken. I cooked the rice separately with some cashews, beans and corriander. The chicken is FULL of flavour with a little kick of chilli. Has already been requested as a regular.

While the recipe calls for whole dried chillis, if you don't have them on hand, just use a pinch or two of ground chilli, the taste and effect is the same. I ran out of whole chillis and I forgot to get more so all I had was ground. It works in exactly the same way :-).

If you like a good chinese takeaway, I would highly recommend this as a home "fakeaway" :-) :-)

Here's a link to the recipe:

A world of Thermomix® recipes - Cookidoo® brings you delicious food all over the world. With thousands of recipes and ideas, you'll find mouth-watering inspiration every time you log in.

09/07/2020

Evening one and all,

It's late, I'm baking and all is almost right with the world.

I hadn't posted about my sourdough exploits for a while so I thought I would give you an update.

Richard, the sourdough starter, has been upgraded to a new home. I couldnt fit him in a glass bowl anymore so he is now in a 10lt tub. Growing at a rate of knots!! When its time to discard remember that you can put it to good use by making pancakes, crumpets, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate cake, almost anything! You can also put it in your compost and give some to your worm farm.

Tonights bread is a "millers loaf" which is a mix of different types of flours, and also my absolute favourite, spiced fig, fruit and hazelnut.

As for thermomix, its taken a small break though tomorrow night we will mix up a batch of spring rolls and this time we will use some meat in them.

To end, here is a pic of a very happy Richard in his new abode 😆

Happy mixing

01/07/2020

Evening all,

I was a bit stumped this afternoon when I was thinking of dinner. I had pulled out some chicken tenderloins from the freezer and just wasn't inspired. Something random popped up on facie and I googled chicken bao buns. (Usually, I would have gone to cookidoo and cooked from that, but I just didn't "feel the flavour" today so good ol' google to the rescue.)

Korean Chicken Bao Buns came up. OMG! Softest fluffliest bao buns I have ever made. The chicken!!! FULL OF FLAVOUR!!!! I wasn't quick enough to get photos of any of the morsels that were made but I can assure you they looked very much like the picture in the attached recipe.

Like usual, I did change it up a little bit :-). I went down to the vege / herb garden and picked a few baby spinach, swiss chard, kale, pea shoots, corriander, parsley and some fennel tops and chopped it up with a little tomato and red onion.

The recipe is a little fiddly but well worth the effort.

I will aim to thermify the recipe this week.

Enjoy the recipe mixers

Korean Chicken Bao - foft and fluffy steamed mini bao buns filled with crispy Korean chicken. A fantastic party food idea that will really impress your guests!

23/06/2020

Evening one and all,

Hope everyone is welland staying 'Rona free.

The kitchen has been buzzing lately with lots of sourdough being made but I thought I would spare you all from the multiple bread posts.

I did however make some spring rolls this week. My dinner theme this week has been thai so thought this qould be a good addition. I will link the recipe below.

I did enlist some assistance from Missminimixer2. We made a little video of the assembly of them. It was so easy to make. We made 20 of them. Now, the pastry cost $3 for the packet. Everythong else in the recipe I had in the fridge. It's just vegetables and if you don't have exactly what's in the recipe, swap it out for something else.

These little morsels cost about $2.50each to buy at a restaurant. We made 20....you do the maths.

https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r142934

Enjoy the video.

Happy mixing 🙂

15/06/2020

Here we go kids! Yes, I've been baking again. Most of the day actually.

First up was my absolute favourite bread, a spice and cinnamon, fig, raisin and hazelnut sourdough. The best breakfast bread. Have this served hot with butter and a cup of tea, so comforting on a cold day.

Then I've made loads of cupcakes. Generally I make all of my cakes either by hand or in my kitchenaid but since the KA is on the fritz (I may or may not have tried to overwork the motor but I will neither confirm nor deny that 🤣🤣) so I did my cuppies in the thermomix. Its seriously good and makes about 60 MINI cupcakes. These are what I like to call throwdowns. Because they are only 1 bite. If you make the next size up - 2 bite cupcakes the recipe would produce about 30. Obviously the bigger the cupcake the less quantity you will yield.

I made 2 batches, 1 vanilla and 1 chocolate. I yielded 96 mini cupcakes plus a loaf cake. I just used the left over batter and made a marble cake. The minimixers can have it for afternoon tea tomorrow.

Some late night bread and cake viewing to get you thinking about baking tomorow.

Happy mixing

12/06/2020

Fun Fact:

Yes I'm baking but I'm not going to bore you with the details tonight :-) so instead, I'm giving you a fun fact.

If you, like me, have started a vege garden and a worm farm whilst we have all been in isolation, you'll know that feeding your worms is important. More important is feeding them the right foods. No citrus, no spicy foods, no onions or garlic, so I'm actually running 2 types of composts. One for general composting in which goes potato peels, citrus, onion skins etc and one for the worms, into which goes, watermelon skins, egg shells, banana peel, tea, apples, carrot and anything else.

Now, here's my fun fact. Did you know that you can feed your worms your sourdough starter discard? I only just found that out. I have a lot of discard at the moment, I just haven't had a chance to make anything with it. So tomorrow when I'm feeding the worms, I'm going to pop some of the starter in with them. Apparently they love it. What's even better is that I can blend it all in with everything else by blending it in the thermomix!

I think I'm winning!!!

Happy mixing :-)

10/06/2020

Eveing all,

It's that time of.night where you all wait with anticipation to see what I'm baking. Am I right?😂😂

Well, you're not going to be disappointed. Tonight I've made chocolate chip cookies. But notmjust any old chocolate chip cookies. I used sourdough starter discard for them. These might just be the bestcookies I've made. They are not too sweet, nice rise to them, fluffy and they hold their shape well.

A win in my books. This recipe can be found on cookidoo, but in true Katsmixingthings style, I did change it up a bit. I will link the recipe in the comments.

https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r630323

Here are some pics

Happy mixing.

09/06/2020

Happy return to work after a long weekend!

If you are like me, you probably spent half your weekend baking and the other half being a bit lazy and just enjoying some downtime.

I did a lot of cooking over the weekend, thermomix, "traditional", bbq...whatever was going. A few sourdoughs were made, a ton of naan bread, some biscuits, giner and lemon tea, you name it I think I did it.

Today was another recipe from my favourite cookbook (at the moment) Bourke Street Bakery, called hazel razel. I did change a couple of things (again) and added some cinnamon and mixed spice, and a couple of figs. I love figs.

I do have an extra loaf. If you are in Berowra and would like it, I'm selling it for $5. Pick up tomorrow.

For now, here are some pics of the loaves from today. Look at that crust!! Even all over. Pretty happy with that!!

Happy mixing

03/06/2020

Hi-dee-ho mixers,

What's been in your thermomix? I have been hitting it hard the past few days but have forgotten to take some photos so I'm making up for a little tonight.

Dinner tonight was courtesy of the thermo. Pastitsio. This was a hit in the house tonight. Everybody went back for 2nds! By the time I remembered that I hadn't taken a photo it looked like a massacre, but never fear, if you follow the recipe (although I did omit the cinnamon) it will look like the picture :-)

Put this one on the rotation list, I promise it's a good one.

https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r246559

Next to be made up was the Ben's Chocolate Biscuits. It's from an english collection. Little tasty morsels for the kids treats for their lunchboxes or afternoon tea. Delicious! They do spread a bit so make sure you leave plenty of room between each scoop of batter when putting on a tray. I'm going to fiddle with this recipe a little bit and see if I can make them even better.

https://cookidoo.com.au/recipes/recipe/en-AU/r80566

I will leave you with some pictures of the cookies, see if you like them :-)

As usual, at this time of night, it's baking time so you might just see some pictures of some sourdough ;-)

Happy mixing

31/05/2020

I know this page has been all about sourdough lately but when it works, it's quite a feat. Nothing like creating yeast out of nothing.

This is what I do with the starter when I have to discard it and feed the starter.

Fried starter dough. Olive oil, starter, onion powder, zaatar, salt. I also tried cinnamon, mixed spice, sultanas and sugar. Super fluffy, super airy.

Both equally delicious, but one savoury, one sweet. Try it.

Happy mixing.