Smoothie Cubes

I’ve been making smoothies – yes, even during winter. It’s an easy way to get dairy, fruit and weet-bix into the little girl.

I originally started by blending weetbix, frozen bananas, and frozen strawberries with lots of milk and a dollop or two of yoghurt, enough to make a 600ml smoothie. The problem with this was that I’d sometimes end up with a strawberry that was still whole.

So, I changed the technique. No milk. I’d blend up the other ingredients so it was like I was grating / chopping it. Then I would add the milk. It was not entirely successful. I’d end up with chunks all over the bowl which I then had to scrape down.

So, I changed the method again. This time, just enough milk to make the weetbix soggy. 2 weetbix, 1 cavendish banana, 6 medium strawberries and about 250ml milk. I’d slowly mix until the weetbix was all soggy and then slowly increase the speed until it turned into something like melting ice cream. Then I’d add milk to make it the right consistency. This would make enough for about 1.5 smoothies. One for me, and half for the little girl.

Then, I figured out, I could leave out the final addition of milk. Why? Because I didn’t really want to have a smoothie every time I made one for the little girl. So, I’d make smoothie “concentrate” so I could spoon out enough to make a smoothie for her, and just add some more milk.

It occurred to me that even after a day or two in the fridge, the “concentrate” still retained its bubbles after I added milk to it. So, I tried freezing it.

The final recipe has been 3 weetbix, 3 frozen lady finger bananas, half a dozen frozen medium strawberries and about 250ml milk. I spread it out on a baking tray that has baking paper on it, freeze it, then slice it up and store in freezer bags.

We had smoothies this afternoon. The little girl had one that was about 250ml, and I had a 600ml one. And there was still plenty of bubbles in it. 😀

More use…

I’ve been busy with my life. Too busy to blog about what I’ve used my TM for.
However, here’s a quick recap, not to mention that it is finally time to make more of the TM Vegetable Stock Concentrate.

I’ve used the TM to

• make pizza dough with the TM recipe – two batches at a time – one pizza is not enough!
• cook plenty of risotto using the lesser amount of rice in the TM recipe (470g) and an addition of 4 pieces of short cut rindless bacon. This makes a veryfull containerful of risotto
• make red-bean blended ice – just like at EasyWay but cheaper – frozen red-bean soup, ice, and a bit of water
• mince beef – my little girl still struggles with eating beef, so I use the TM to turn my beef, whether frozen or thawed, but usually still raw, into pretty much a mooshy paste.
• mince carrots – this is a winner – I add it to our bologonese sauce (which I do not make in the TM, nor do I use the TM recipe), but after seeing Gary “hide” carrots in the Sausage Rolls with Hidden Vegetables and labouriously grating the carrots, I thought to myself “hey! I have a TM to do that ‘grating’ for me”
• cream butter and sugar – I’ve used the TM twice to do this now. I’ll have to get my mum’s opinion on whether it’s as good as the KitchenAid, or the Kenwood, but it has been sufficient for my purposes – chocolate chip biscuits and a treacle pudding
• icecream – I’ve been making lots of the mango icecream recipe that came in a TM newsletter.
  

  300g mango, frozen in chunks
  300g milk, frozen in cubes
  50 g cream
  50 g sweetened condensed milk

  I changed the recipe somewhat as I’m lazy to always have cream, so I up the condensed milk anywhere from 80g to 100g and then add some fresh milk to compensate for the liquid component – 20g to 40g. YUM!

• smoothies – frozen blueberries, frozen strawberries, greek yoghurt, a weet-bix, and some milk – my little girl loves them.

I did also encounter my first error. “Err 52”. The user manual did NOT specify what it was, nor how to resolve it. I was quite unhappy, but fortunately, the internet came to my rescue. It was because condensation had dripped down the pins of the TM bowl and into the machine where the pins are inserted. Gave it a day or two to dry, and then I was back in business. Phew!

The other interesting thing to note about using the TM… my little girl thinks it makes the best noise, and when I recently made some pizza dough she would demand it make more noise when it would pause while in “Interval Mode”. Which, of course, it would. Perhaps that could be a new selling point – “entertaining for demanding children”. 😉

A thermomix dinner

The other weekend, we had a few of my aunties visit. There was a desire from one of them to eat the TM Mushroom Risotto. She would be providing the mushrooms. It was muchly enjoyed by all.

It was not the only thing we made with the TM that night though. Things started in the afternoon. Mum brought her TM over as well, so we had two TMs going at once.

We started with Soy Milk. The aunties were impressed.

Then we experimented. The aunties had been to China and they had tried a Sweet Corn drink. The uncles were roped into de-husking the corn and cutting the kernels off the cobs.

We experimented with the following, based on the Soy Milk recipe

300g corn kernels
100g water

Blend at speed 10 for 1 minute
Cook at 100C for 6 minutes (speed 4)

We ended up adding another 200g water to make the drink less thick, and the aunties were very impressed that the resultant drink was smooth without needing to strain it.

We then proceeded to make Mushroom Risotto. Afterwards, we made the TM Lemon Custard. I made it to the recipe in the book, but it turned out excessively thick. I think I will put less cornflour next time. It was still very yummy.

All in all, a successful evening.

Red Bean Blended Ice

Mum and I are fans of Red Bean Blended Ice from EasyWay. So, we thought we’d try to make some at home. Simple. Ice and red bean dessert (as in the Cantonese red bean dessert soup – red beans, water, sugar and cook).

I brought out my ice, and based on what happened with the sorbet from my first demo (the ice didn’t crush up as well as the demonstrator had hoped) decided I’d crush the ice first. The basics guide says about 400g of ice at speed 7-10 for about 10 seconds. I didn’t weigh my ice, but I turned it up to speed 7. And went by sound. There was no more rattling after about 4 seconds, so I figured it was all crushed. I was surprised to see it wasn’t just crushed – it was… well, it looked like icing sugar, it was all white! We added the red beans and some extra water, and the result was fabulous.
Our own Red Bean Blended Ice at home. All that was missing was pearls.

Beetroot Juice

Mum brought over a whole bunch of vegetables so I can make the vegetable stock concentrate, but she’d like to make some beetroot juice beforehand.

We use one peeled medium beetroot, 2 medium carrots, a stick of celery, some frozen rockmelon. We chopped this on speed 8 for about 30 seconds. Then we added some water and mixed it for about a minute on speed 8.

It was too thick. And too beetroot-y for my liking. But I think it was good for us, so I drank it.

Soy Milk

I have about a quarter of the soaked soy beans left over, so I halve the recipe from the book. 250g of water to pulverise the beans, and 300g to cook.

I read the instructions on halving recipes – it says to reduce cooking time by 20%, so it should be about 8 minutes at 90C on speed 4.

I set it for 6 minutes – I don’t want it to burn.

While I wait, I do some research on how long soy milk needs to boil for the trypsin inhibitor to be destroyed. All the information I find suggests about 5 minutes is the minimum.

I return to the Thermomix and find it’s almost done and it hasn’t gotten to 90C yet. Note that my beans were cold from the fridge to start with. I keep it going for another 8 or so minutes. I want to make sure the resulting milk is digestible.

I strain it the next day after keeping it in the fridge – I have to wait for the straining cloth to be returned. It turns out to be very nice and thick.

I think this one is a success.

Carrot and Rockmelon Juice

Mum wants to try something in the Thermomix.
What can we do?
Carrot and orange juice! Like it says in the recipe book. But she doesn’t want citrus even though I have mandarines. We’ve recently cut and frozen some rockmelon. We reckon that will work.

The recipe:

1 large carrot
1 tray ice cubes
2-3 navel oranges, peeled, quartered
200g-500g cold water

At speed 8, for 30 seconds, blend carrot, ice and oranges.
Add water then mix for 2 minutes at speed 8.

Our variation:

2 medium carrots
about an ice cube tray’s worth of frozen rockmelon
about 500g water

mix everything for about 1 minute on speed 8

It worked, and resulted in about 700ml of juice. It tasted of way too much carrot, not surprisingly. It would have been better if we’d followed the method correctly.

The Thermomix Arrives

The day of the delivery arrives! How exciting! Mum already had me soak 2 cups of soy beans in preparation.

The Thermomix lady arrives and we set up the machine. It’s so easy, just like the demonstrations.

We try to follow the recipe to make soy milk.

150g dried soy beans, soaked overnight and drained.
1100g water

Mix beans and 500g of the water at speed 8 for 1 minute
Add the remaining water and mix at speed 4 for 10 minutes at 90C

Strain, add sweetener as required, drink.

It was a success and even the Thermomix lady was impressed.

Thermomix Demo

An up close and personal demonstration.

Everyone arrives late, but once it gets going, there’s no stopping what the Thermomix creates!

We made strawberry sorbet, peach bellinis, bread rolls, garlic and herb dip, mushroom risotto, coleslaw and lemon custard – all from the recipe book.

The things we didn’t like:
the raw garlic and the raw shallots in the dip
watching all the powdered sugar and flour waft through the gap created by the MC and into the kitchen – ugh – I detest mess!

But overall, it was all yummy and easy and fast.