haven't been around much as i've been sick again and very uninspired. last week was easy meals all week and i think this week will be much the same...

Pumpkin Risotto
Pumpkin soup (for lunches, for dinner pending weather)
slow cooker roast chicken & spices with mashed potatoes & salad
veg chilli with beans (slow cooker)
spag bol
dahl, potato & okra stir fry. and a meat if i can be bothered

plus i need to make some
chicken stock concentrate
brownies
chocolate cupcakes with strawberry icing (ryan's request)

come and join us :) it's predominantly Australian, though there is a group for NZ'ers and I'm sure all are welcome.

Gluten Free Living

First off these are NOT gluten free (sorry coeliac & gluten intolerant readers).

however, they were soooooooooooooooo easy and very delicious! they take just over 1.5 hours to make, but there's only about 10 minutes of work in that ;) they were chewy on the outside, soft and fluffy on the inside.

Next time i would probably lower the sugar a little - I'll try 25g and then 20g. they weren't REALLY sweet but still a little sweet for my liking. I also felt that they needed a wash or glaze of some sort too - I'll try egg perhaps (only to keep them dairy free). Original recipe came from here :)

it would be easy to put cheese on before baking if you desired, and probably not hard to make variations such as cinnamon & raisin, or blueberry (with dried & soaked berries)


Bagels (makes 8)
290g warm water
480g bakers flour
5-10g yeast (i usually add it slowly so it wavers between the 2 to get approximately a sachet worth)
25g sugar
1 tspn salt

add all ingredients into the thermomix. mix on speed 5-6 for around 10-15 seconds until it just starts to come together into a ball.
then put on closed lid, knead setting for 2 minutes

place in an large oiled bowl, cover with cling wrap and leave to rise for an hour.

heat oven to 240'c (or 200' in my stupid oven lol)

divide in half (i found it easiest to use my hands and twist it into pieces), then half again and half again. roll each of the 8 pieces into a ball, then use your thumb/s to create a hole in the middle. i also did a bit of a twist in the doug, sort of pulling the inside towards the outside in a few places. place on a greased tray (i also lined with baking paper), cover with a damp tea towel and leave for 15 minutes.

in the meantime bring a large pot of water to the boil. add in bagels one at a time. cook 30 seconds per side - i generally added a second straight after turning the first and it was fine having 2 in at a time. drain (mine stuck to paper towel, so put them on a strainer over the original bowl used for the dough) then place back on the tray.

bake for 15 minutes.

let cool slightly and then go for it!!!!!!!!!!



originally posted by Karen at http://brazen20au.blogspot.com/

1 onion, peeled and diced
2 large carrots, diced
6 medium red skinned potatoes, diced
10 slices chopped pancetta or 6 slices bacon, diced (a quick fry would be great if you can be bothered)
600g-1kg diced beef (i used lean but a stewing type would be even better)
2 tspns beef or vegie stock concentrate or 2 stock cubes (gluten free)
2-3 tabs gluten free worcestershire sauce (we use Spring Gully)
approx 3 tabs honey
1 bottle of gluten free beer (we used O'Brien's Premium Lager *)
2 tabs cornflour (i added this later but you could also toss the beef cubes in it before cooking)
optional:
2 handfuls green beans, cut into 1" pieces
thyme and / or garlic


I used a 3L slow cooker, but if you use more meat you will need a bigger cooker

Place ingredients into the bowl in the order listed above.

I tend to use Auto which cooks on high for 4 hours then switches to low and cook for the rest of the day

* Geoff said it was an OK beer, he wouldn't choose to drink it but if had to be GF he would be happy to drink it.

Happy birthday MUM!!

made this today for mum's birthday :) original recipe here

unfortunately even though the skewer came out clean and the slice looked clean, only the outside pieces were cooked and the middle 6-8 pieces were definitely not. in fact when i removed all the pieces around them to put in a container to take to mum's the top half slid off the bottom half of some of the pieces lol the picture above shows the slice on the rack upside down - it's so sloppy in the middle i can't even turn it over!!!

at least what i gave mum was cooked fine :)

so, i doubled the recipe and put it in a quite large tray, but it still came out quite thick, probably 4cm thick. I think next time i would double the cream cheese part (as it was quite thin) and cook 150% of the chocolate part. I'll put the quantities in the recipe for 100%, 150% and 200% ;D

this slice was perfect for gluten free baking, you'd never know it was!

MARBLED CHOCOLATE CHEESECAKE SLICE
185g (280g, 370g) butter, cubed
25g (40g, 50g) cocoa
220g (330g, 440g) sugar
2 (3, 4) eggs
160g (240g, 320g) plain gluten free flour
250g (380g, 500g) cream cheese, softened
75g (110g, 150g) sugar, extra
5g (10g, 15g) vanilla
1 (1, 2) egg, extra

Melt butter with cocoa, 90'c, speed 2 for 3 or so minutes

add sugar and turn onto speed 3, add eggs through lid one by one

Add flour, and mix for 10 seconds on speed 4-5. scrape down sides of bowl and mix for another 10 seconds speed 4-5

Pour mixture into lined lamington tin.

Clean bowl with water (20 seconds speed 8) and empty out.

Add cream cheese, vanilla and extra sugar and extra egg. Mix speed 3 til the cream cheese is no longer a solid lump and then turn up to speed 4 and mix for around 20-30 secs

Pour over chocolate mixture, swirl through with knife for marbled effect.

Bake in 180C oven 40 (or so) mins, cool in tin, cut when cold

---- Sent from my 3 mobile

well, I ended up deciding that 25 kids were far too many to cope with, even at the park and went with 3 (we do one for each year and I forgot she was turning 4 haha as it is we had all the siblings join us and had a total of 10 kids lol)

I still went for the original menu ideas as I still needed easy.

to make the fairy cups I looked for some suitable bought gluten free biccies but no such luck, so I used a sugar cookie recipe from the new GF baking book i had bought in January. I'll post the thermomix conversion later but they were very nice! you'll have to excuse the photos, I'm still having to use my camera phone as we can't afford to replace our camera atm.


I used gluten free marshmallows I'd found in a discount store (they were a little tall and thin), Allen's Freckles, musk Lifesavers and icing coloured with a little cochineal. they were a hit and I had ended up with nearly 40 cookies so, after they were taste tested by the family, i was able to make enough fairy cups to send to school too.


for the cake, I attempted to make another 'rainbow' cake but used this recipe instead - disaster! the recipe was far too runny and i ended up with a cake that had a vague brown colour through the middle with a pinkish layer on the bottom and a chocolate layer on top LOL I also had my usual disaster with over-colouring the icing but was assured it was "Tinkerbell green" not to mention how shockingly the icing was applied (but i didn't realise til i saw the photos!) lol Rora loved it so that's what counts!


the birthday party went well too by the way, but the 4yo attitude could do with some work ;)