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Episode 11: The Scones Fiasco plus JAM

Ash’s Scones Recipe:
5 cups of SRF
1.5 cups cream
1.5 cups lemonade.

I baked them at 220 degrees C for about 10 minutes.
Lots of advice on touching the dough for the minimal time possible. Don’t overwork it.

Jam from Just Add Moonshine –  justaddmoonshine.wordpress.com – check out the tasting notes

A photo posted by Alisa (@girliejonesadventures) on

Mothers group spread – scones, Tim Tam bites, biscotti

A photo posted by Alisa (@girliejonesadventures) on

Jam and cream!



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January 3   S’more cups!

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Some time in the middle of working on Kaleidoscope, Julia and I started discussing and then exchanging chocolates and biscuits. We call it our cultural exchange and through it I’ve got to try all kinds of goodies that I’ve only read about in American books. Junior minds, candy corn, Pepperidge farm cookies, even girls scouts cookies! I’ve sent Julia a few of our much loved goodies (Tim Tams, Kingstons) and some things that are disgusting too (what the hell is Cadbury doing to chocolates? Seriously.), so she can try em out.

At Worldcon, when we met up in London, we did an exchange in person. I believe my stash accompanied them across Scotland. My stash came back home with me. And here, conveniently for this photo, is what I still had left from the ingredients for S’mores. Yes, that’s right. She gave me the ingredients to make my very own, genuine, s’mores. So exciting! And we did make them. And can tell you, with the backing of science, that they are OMG sweet! We could each only eat one and then … did not manage to ever get a hankering for a second one. (She did especially give me HUGE American size marshmallows, mostly for amusement)

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And so. Now I am at home a lot, and have a baby, I have become that stereotype and hang out a lot on Pinterest. Whereupon the other day I came across this recipe for S’more cups. Since I had all the ingredients …

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Obviously, less tidy and need than the recipe photos – I suspect our mini muffin tins are more mini in Oz. The ones that worked the best were from my friands tin instead. But the marshmallows are still jumbo, even when cut in thirds.

Report card: very delicious. Much smaller S’mores, much less sugar (though, still 100 calories a serve)

 

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Today’s drink: Grand Yunnan black tea from T2

Today’s total word count: 341

Year Total running word tally from (Nov 24): 18 861

Progress on: Yoga practise, baking, project planning/beginning of weekly review



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February 1   Tea review

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I’m the sort of person who likes new things to “settle in” when I get them. I dunno why but I can’t just use up something I just got – I like to admire the yarn skein before it gets knit up, or admire the candles before I burn them etc. The trouble with that though is there’s no clear timeframe on when the settling in is up and the enjoying is on. Luckily for me, I married someone with no such philosophy. C is the kind of person who eats all the goodies out of his Xmas stocking between breakfast and lunch on Xmas day. He has no desire to save nice things for another day.

This, then, is the only reason that we have already broken out the teas from the January Monstrositea and tasted tea number 3. (I should note that I discovered a segment of ginger included in the canister for the peppermint tea and thus the hint that the teas are to be enjoyed now, when fresh and not later when the honeymoon is over.)

I’d baked a cake. I know! I can’t believe it either. I’d just whipped one up for no reason at all. I used to be that kind of person, maybe I’m her again. Anyhow, this was Wednesday night, with Blue Jasmine to watch on the TV:

I enjoyed both the movie and the tea! The tea we had was from Lupicia – a green tea with strawberries and vanilla. It was a subtle, gentle tea, perfect for midweek relaxing and accompanying my chocolate cake. The cake was light and fluffy, not too sweet. I would probably add more milk next time as it was a bit dry. I used The Road to Loving my Thermomix chocolate cake recipe and substituted lactose free chocolate milk for milk since I had one and not the other.



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Well, technically I spose I didn’t actually *bake* for Bake Club since none of the recipes used the oven. Usually, I’m enthusiastic about the concept of Bake Club and might still be so whilst thinking up what I will make but by the time it comes round, I’ve tried to get too pack too many things in to my week and C has to step in and help me make my contribution. Which is lovely of him but not actually the point of Bake Club.

Here’s a revelation, since I’m not currently working full time, I have time to do things like bake. And I find myself in the mood to do so. Who knew holding down a day job and trying to juggle a small business plus all the other things would suck your energy for feeling interested in activities like baking?

I’ve been wanting to make friends with my thermomix and Bake Club was the perfect incentive to actually start. Let me just say this, a refrigerated cheesecake that took maybe 5 minutes to make (plus fiddling with the construction of base etc).

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I’ve been inspired by the Road to Loving My Thermomix Facebook page and this Chewy Caramel Tim Tam Cheesecake recipe is from there. Basically cream cheese, sugar, sour cream (I substituted for cream to give it more tang), vanilla (above) and then add chopped Tim Tams:

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And pour on top of a base of Tim Tams and butter, refridgerate and voila:

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Since that took no time at all, I also gave these few recipes of various balls  a go. I’d seen them over Xmas and thought they might be fun. Personally, I found them all a bit dry but they were super quick to make and the best bit is you don’t have to clean the thermomix bowl better batches.

First up apricot balls which as basically equal parts dried apricots and dessicated coconut plus a dash of yoghurt and then rolled in coconut:

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Then I tried choc balls and milo balls (the milo ones are made just like the choc but instead of cocoa you switch for milo and coconut). Basically crushed shortbread, sweetened condensed milk plus whatever the flavouring is. She adds different things for fillings for other varieties like a frozen raspberry or a slice of mars bar etc.

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The fiddly bit was the construction – rolling pieces of dough into balls and then into the coconut. In the end I was cooking for 3 hours but I didn’t notice the time cause everything was so easy.

Next Bake Club, I volunteered to bring savouries because we had Sugar Overload:

BakeClub



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Look, it was only a matter of time. No really. I actually have been making it into my kitchen a bit more often of late. For a number of reasons, the first being that when you’re home A LOT and OMG I am home A LOT now, you get bored. And hungry. And baking is excellent for procrastination. I also discovered a little truth about myself – I am far more likely to do things in the kitchen if the kitchen is clean, not just dirty dishes washed, but the benches and sink wiped down, the appliances wiped over, the stovetop cleaned and the pantry stocked in an orderly fashion. Cause of course, yeah, that’s a clean kitchen just ASKING to be dived into and messed up with flour and cocoa thrown about and whatnot.  Turns out, if I do this – the kitchen cleaning – regularly, it’s never that bad or gross. And there’s this sense of satisfaction wandering past such a gleaming room. Oh Gpd, I’m becoming domesticated.

Anyway, that’s all by the by because just before Christmas, my sister sends me this link to a Facebook page that she thinks C would like – The Road to Loving My Thermomix – which has daily posts of delicious things this woman is making to learn to use her Thermomix. I Liked the page and then had her gorgeous photos of delicious things appear in my Timeline each day, quietly inspiring me to think about actually learning how to use our Thermomix to do the same.

I think C nearly had a small MI when he saw me the first day actually attempt to make something myself in the Thermomix. But I’d decided that for our wedding anniversary, I’d make us a cheesecake I’d seen on that FB page. And before I did that, I wanted to try some other things out first. And then, the following day, when I was in the supermarket buying ingredients for the cheesecake, my sister calls me. “The FB page is gone,” she says.

“WHAT?” I try not to yell too panicky in the middle of the flour aisle. “What do you mean *gone*?” Yes. I had not actually taken down the recipe I was planning to make for our anniversary. All I had were the ingredients list. And yes, I had left this all to the very last minute.

“I KNOW! Can you believe it?!!” my sister continues.

“But! I LOVE that page!” I say. “And I wanted to try a whole bunch of her recipes!”

“I know! Me too! There was this note there this morning as the last post. And now the page is gone. I’m on this closed group for this page and we’re all scrabbling to see what recipes we each took down. I’ll see if I can get your cheesecake recipe.”

So the conversation continues. I’m wandering up and down the aisles and gossiping with my sister who is saying that she thinks the reason was that maybe someone did something awful in their TMX that ruined it and now the woman had to pull her page down. It was a hilarious conversation but my favourite bit was that I love my friendship that has truly blossomed with my sister over the last two years. And also that she sent me a screencap of the cheesecake recipe that she hunted down for me later that day.

Anyway. I made the cheesecake. It did not turn out right (it was a non gelatin, non baked one and it never really set til I kept it in the freezer and it wasn’t ready to eat til the next day, frozen). The Facebook page came back up, there was no scandal. One of her kids must have flicked a privacy setting whilst she wasn’t looking. And the likes on the page have steadily increased to somewhere near 20k. And I decided to make a few things regularly, maybe starting out as just one thing a week til I get used to the idea of actually being in the kitchen more often.

And so voila, raspberry filled choc balls. Made from the FB page. Actually she has a bunch of different varieties that I might try. They take exactly one minute to whip up, in one bowl! And then maybe 10 mins to put together – placing a frozen raspberry inside the dough (biscuits, cocoa and condensed milk) and then rolling them in coconut.

 

 



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