Mrs Booth's Crumbly Crunchies

My sister and I both have fond memories of these biscuits, we always knew as 'crumbly crunchies', that our childhood friends' Mum used to make. These are much like melting moments, but a little lighter and not sickly sweet like melting moments can sometimes be. It had been over 20 years since I had tasted one of these, until I was lucky enough to get the recipe last night. Today I converted the recipe for the Thermomix and they turned out just as I remembered them. Depending on the size you roll them, this should make around 55 individual biscuits, which you then sandwich together.

Mrs Booth's Crumbly Crunchies
Ingredients

280 grams Plain Flour
120 grams Custard Powder
130 grams Cornflour
2 teaspoons Cream of Tartar
1 teaspoon Bicarb of Soda
175 grams Unsalted Butter
2 Eggs
190 grams Caster Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla Essence


Biscuit Method
Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Add caster sugar to TM bowl and pulverise for 10 secs spd 9. Add butter and chop 5 secs spd 8. Insert butterfly and whip the mixture for 90 secs spd 4. Add eggs and vanilla. Whip for 10 secs spd 4. Remove butterfly. Add remaining ingredients and mix for 30 secs spd 6, using the spatula to incorporate the ingredients as it is mixing. This is quite a dense mixture before baking. Roll into small balls, approximately 1.5cm diameter. Place on baking paper lined oven tray. Ensure you leave enough space between as they do spread. Slightly flatten each ball by pressing gently with a fork. Bake for 10-12 mins or until biscuits are firm. Don't allow them to brown. Place on wire rack to completely cool before icing.


Icing
Ingredients
220 grams Icing Sugar
2 teaspoons Butter
4 desertspoons water
Cochineal or pink food colouring

Icing Method
Add water and butter to TM bowl and cook 50 degrees 90 secs spd 2. Add icing sugar and blitz for 15 secs spd 4 or until the mixture is a nice, thick, spreadable icing. Add more water if needed, but don't allow to become runny. Add a couple of drops of pink colouring and blitz again on spd 4 until colour is evenly distributed. Use icing to sandwich biscuits together.

Orange Sesame Bliss Balls

Now there are a million Bliss Ball recipes around at the moment. I tend to just whip them up with whatever I have leftover in the pantry. This recipe is a combination of a couple I have been given. You can easily tweak it to include/exclude whatever you want, just ensure you keep the texture relatively consistent. You may like to reduce the orange zest in this recipe if you find it too strong.

Orange Sesame Bliss Balls
Ingredients

200 grams Medjool dates
50 grams cashews
1/2 orange zest
30 grams oats
2-3 Tablespoons sesame seeds to roll balls in

Method
Blitz dates, cashews, orange zest and oats in Thermomix bowl for 10 seconds on speed 10. Form small balls and roll in sesame seeds. Makes around 16 balls. Keep Bliss Balls in the fridge. Can also be frozen.



These can obviously be made in a normal food processor, you will likely just need to blitz for longer to ensure the orange zest has been completely dispersed through the mixture.

Given these contain cashews and sesame seeds, they aren't school lunchbox friendly. But you could substitute the cashews for more oats, you may just need to add a tablespoon of boiling water to bring it together. You could then coat in coconut.

Carrot Cake Porridge

This recipe has been adapted from Sinead Dyer's post on the Thermomix recipe community. It's a bit of a play on Sarah Wilson's "I Quit Sugar" Carrot Cake Porridge Whip. As someone with a real weakness for raw cake mix, I loved the resemblance this porridge has to carrot cake batter.  Both my 3.5 year old and 9 month old baby loved it-such a great way to smuggle an extra vege into their diet. I have blitzed the carrot in mine so that there are no chunky bits for my boys to discover, but you could certainly leave it a little chunkier if you prefer. This recipe has got just the right amount of spice and sweetness, without any added refined sugar. In my house, this is enough for 2 adults or 1 adult and 2 small kids.

Carrot Cake Porridge

Ingredients

2 pitted dates or 1 Medjool date

1 carrot, unpeeled, chopped into thirds

60 grams oats

145 grams milk

145 grams water

Handful sultanas

1/4 teaspoon Cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon Nutmeg

Handful walnuts and blueberries to serve.

Method

Blitz carrot and dates on speed 10 for 5 seconds. Scrape down bowl and blitz for another 5 seconds on speed 10. Add all other ingredients (except walnuts and blueberries) and cook for 10 mins at 90 degrees, speed 2, reverse. Serve topped with a small dash of extra milk, the walnuts and blueberries, plus a sprinkle of cinnamon sugar, if you need the extra sweetness.

Pizza Pockets

Strangely, my son refuses to eat pizza and hamburgers. This is despite the fact that he loves all of the ingredients these food items contain. I have tried so many times to get him interested in both healthy and treat versions of them both, but he won't budge. Tonight though, we had a breakthrough with these Pizza Pockets. These are more of a snack food, rather than a meal and this recipe makes around 8 Pizza Pockets. You could vary the filling with whatever you have available, perhaps even sneaking some veges such as mushrooms and spinach into them.

Pizza Pockets

Dough (Half batch of EDC pizza dough)
Ingredients
140grams luke warm water
1/2 sachet dried yeast
1tsp salt
10grams olive oil
250grams bakers flour

Filling
70grams cubed cheese
4 shortcut rashers bacon
1 spring onion
70grams pizza sauce
1 clove garlic


Dough method

Place water, yeast, oil and salt in TM bowl. Mix 5 secs speed 3. Add flour. Mix 6 secs speed 8. Set dial to closed position and knead 2 mins. Wrap dough in silicone bread mat and allow to rise in warm spot for 30 mins. Break into 8 balls and roll to approximately 10 cm diameter circles.

Filling method

Place all filling ingredients in TM bowl and turbo twice for 1 second. Place a small ball of the filling in the centre of each dough disc. Fold the edges into the centre and pinch together. Flip ball over and place on baking tray, smooth side up. Make sure balls are touching as this will help them rise. Brush top with milk and bake for 30 mins, 180 degrees.

Banana Blueberry Pikelets

This afternoon I was looking to make a quick, relatively healthy, snack for my boys that incorporated some bananas that had seen better days. These pikelets are the result.  They have a really subtle banana flavour with the blueberries bursting in your mouth as you eat them. I have used Stevia to sweeten these, although you could substitute this with equal parts caster sugar.

Banana Blueberry Pikelets

Ingredients
1 ripe banana
1 cup SR flour (regular or wholemeal)
1/4 cup stevia
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
3/4 cup milk
1 tsp vanilla
Roughly half a cup frozen blueberries

Method
Add all ingredients except blueberries to Thermomix bowl. Mix on speed 5 for 15 seconds or until just combined. Do not over mix.

*If you aren't using a Thermomix, simply mash the banana roughly with a fork. Then add all other ingredients except blueberries and mix with a spoon until combined. Lumps are ok.

Pour batter into pikelet shapes in a frypan on low heat. Immediately sprinkle each pikelet with a few frozen blueberries. Once the bubbles appearing in the batter begin to pop, flip pikelet over. Remove from pan after a few minutes and they are cooked through.

Sticky Date Hot Cross Buns

I know its a bit late for a HCB recipe, but I only whipped these up for the first time last night and they were so good I just had to share. The proving process for these buns happens overnight and it is well worth taking the time to allow this to happen, as the texture is amazing.

No need to dirty a piping bag to make the crosses. Just fill a ziplock bag and cut the corner off, that way you can just throw it all away when you're done.

http://www.recipecommunity.com.au/baking-sweet-recipes/sticky-date-hot-cross-buns/145566

Sesame Bagels

Good bagels are so hard to come by in Perth. They are often really dense with an almost stale taste to them. These Thermomix ones, however, are easy to make and perfectly light and fluffy in the middle. I served these for Easter with smoked salmon and a lemon chive cream cheese. 

Sesame Bagels

Ingredients

360ml water

20 grams sugar

10 grams salt

10ml vegetable oil

10 grams dry yeast (roughly 1.5 packets)

600 grams plain flour

Sesame Seeds

Method

Preheat oven to 220 degrees. Add water, sugar, salt, oil and yeast to Thermomix bowl. Mix 5 seconds speed 5. Add flour and mix 6 seconds speed 7. Knead for 2 mins on interval setting. Break dough into 10  equal portions and roll into balls. Allow to rest for 20 mins.

Once rested, poke your finger right through the middle of the ball, making a bagel/doughnut shape. Allow bagels to rest again for 20 mins.

Bring an inch of water to the boil in a frypan. Boil bagels for a minute on each side, then flip and boil for another minute. You can do 3-4 at a time, depending on the size of your pan. When removing bagels from water, place on a tea towel to dry them slightly. Then place bagels on a baking tray lined with baking paper. Sprinkle the bagels with sesame seeds and bake 10 mins. Flip bagels and bake for another 10 mins.

Lemon Chive Cream Cheese

Ingredients

1 tub cream cheese

Zest of one lemon

1-2 tablespoons chopped chives

Salt to taste

Method

Combine all ingredients in a bowl and serve with smoked salmon and bagels.

Coffee Scroll Biscuits

As a child, my favourite biscuits were always Coffee Scrolls. I was there through both the Nabisco and Arnotts eras, carefully nibbling the crunchy spiced biscuit, saving the dollop of soft pink icing until the very end. I was understandably devastated when they stopped making them a few years back. I really craved them when I was pregnant and wished I'd discovered this recipe back then. These are spot on replicas of the original biscuit.

I actually made these in my Kitchenaid mixer as the Thermomix was busy with another task, but next time I make them I'll convert the recipe. I also just did a half batch, which yielded around 24 biscuits. To make the circle imprints, I hunted around the kitchen to find two circles, one smaller than the other, ending up with a shot glass and a small lid (the creator of the recipe used a fancy whisk). You could even scrap this step if you wanted to. My dough didn't come together enough, as per the recipe, so I added roughly 2 tablespoons of milk to form the soft dough.

Enjoy this little blast from the past.

http://sweetperfectioncakes.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/long-lost-favourite-coffee-scroll.html

Flourless Orange Cupcakes

A friend gave me this recipe a few years ago and it is dead easy. I like to make it in individual cupcakes. As the mixture lacks any flour, they don't really rise, so you'll need to fill the cases to the top. These are super sweet and quite dense, so a dollop of cream cuts through the sweetness perfectly.


Flourless Orange Cupcakes

Cake
Ingredients
2 Navel oranges
250 grams slivered almonds
8 dried apricots
170 grams caster sugar
5 eggs
1 teaspoon baking powder

Syrup
1 orange
1/2 cup caster sugar
1/2 cup water


Cake Method
Preheat oven to 150 degrees. Place 2 oranges in a plastic bag and microwave on high for 12 mins. Cool. Put the almonds in a blender or Thermomix and pulse/turbo until they resemble almond meal. Add cooled oranges and apricots to blended almonds. Process until finely chopped. In the Thermomix, this was 12 seconds on speed 8. Add sugar, eggs and baking powder. Blend for 20 seconds (12 seconds speed 5 in the Thermomix). Pour into cupcake cases and bake approximately 25 mins. Leave to cool in the tin, then remove.

Syrup Method
Zest the orange and squeeze out the juice. Put these in a saucepan with sugar and water. Bring to boil, stirring until sugar in dissolved. Then boil on high for 10 mins without stirring. Cool then serve with cupcakes and a dollop of whipped cream.

Make 12 cupcakes.

Pumpkin and Cinnamon Bread

I first tried Pumpkin and Cinnamon Bread at Sayers Sister in Leederville. It was served for breakfast with a little shot glass of butter and maple syrup on the side. As soon as I got home I Googled to try and find a similar recipe. Luckily the first one I tried tasted almost identical and I have been making it regularly ever since. 

This is not a Thermomix recipe, but I do steam my pumpkin in the Varoma. Although I have 'mashed' the pumpkin in the Thermomix before, I found that it was a better consistency and the bread rose better when I hand mashed it, leaving the course lumps in the pumpkin, rather than having a pumpkin puree. I also reduced the brown sugar to 1 cup.

I often double the mix and make two loaves, freezing individually wrapped slices that can be popped in the toaster to defrost. It is so moist that you don't really need anything on it, but if you feel like indulging, a smear of butter and a drizzle of maple syrup goes down a treat.

http://allrecipes.com.au/recipe/858/pumpkin-and-cinnamon-bread.aspx