Sweetie Belle's Vanilla Cupcakes Thermomix Style!

Ok this one was a request from Kira.  The recipe comes from her 'My Little Pony Cupcake Recipe Book' and they were really good! We mixed the batter in Thermie but of course you could just use a normal mixer.

125g butter
1 cup caster sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 large eggs
1 1/2 cups self raising flour

Icing

240g Icing Sugar
70g butter
20ml  milk
dash of vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 180'C.  Cream butter and sugar at speed 6 for 1 minute.  Add the remaining ingredients and mix on speed 6 for 20-40 seconds. Spoon mix into 12 cupcake cases, fill to 2/3. Bake for 20 minutes.

While the cakes are cooling, mix icing ingredients on speed 4 for 30 seconds.  Ice your cakes,  job done!

Quite possibly the best mashed potato I have ever tasted!

Ok it's a big call I know, but this was seriously good!

It comes from the British version of Thermomix's Everyday Cookbook.  If you don't have a thermie, just steam or boil the potatoes then mash by hand or pass through a potato ricer.

I've tweaked the recipe a little, so here is my version


750g floury potatoes, cut into 2cm cubes
500g water
1 tsp salt
100g milk/cream
1tsp vegetable stock concentrate or stock powder (see here for recipe)
40g butter

Add water to jug and place potatoes in steamer basket. Place steamer basket in to the thermie jug and cook on soft spoon at varoma temperature for 20 - 25mins or until soft. If cooking on stove top, steam or boil potatoes until well cooked.  Do not try to mash undercooked potatoes, they'll turn to glue!

When potatoes are cooked, remove the basket and drain the potatoes.  Remove the water from the jug and attach the butterfly whisk.  Place potatoes back in the jug and add the remaining ingredients.  Whisk on speed 4 for 2-10 seconds.

The kids love these! You could also add your own favours or seasoning such as roasted garlic or parmesan cheese for a change.  Enjoy :-)

Welcome Thermie!

Ok so you can see from how regularly I've been posting in the last 12 months that I don't often get the chance to make many cards these days.  I'm going to make a real effort to change that but in the meantime I thought I'd start sharing my other hobby...cooking and baking.

I've always loved to cook and at one stage I had every intention of throwing away the day job and heading back to school to become a pastry chef.  Well websites and communications are a far cry from puddings and icing but I still love to cook so thought I'd start sharing my favourite recipes here.

Another reason is I've got a new gadget, affectionately known as Thermie, to cook with and I LOVE IT!  Cooking was becoming a real pain in the butt. My passion had turned into a chore. Between working four days a week and hearing the constant 'I don't like that' from the little people whenever I tried anything with a sauce or flavour, I felt like throwing my hands up in the air, handing them box of nuggets and calling it a day! But what kind of mother would I be if I did that?? (A popular one with the little people I suspect!!)

Enter a new kitchen and my Thermomix (aka Thermie) and I love it!  Between that and the oven it does just about everything (except wash the dishes unfortunately). I've got a new rule with the kids...one dinner for everyone, don't like it there's the fruit bowl! I figure they won't starve and will at least try most things and hopefully over time learn that risotto will not kill them :-)

So I'll now be sharing any tried and tested recipes on here that can be used in a Thermomix or easily converted to use in a conventional oven or cooktop.  I  might even get the kids to share a 'kid friendly' rating, although probably best not to use that to determine the quality of the food ;-)

The recipes will be a mix of mine and those I've collected from around the place, off course when I know the origins I'll credit the original source.

thanks for stopping by
Kirst