mutteringhousewife

My Thermomix had its own holiday while we were away. It went to visit a friend and made a variety of beverages and butter and many other things that I’ll find out about next time I barge into her house and demand she makes me a coffee. I missed it as soon as I got home, I had to go and retrieve it and immediately make porridge and yoghurt and raisin bread in it. Not all at the same time. Over several hours. I know I’ve discussed friands before, but they’re just one more thing that’s a lot easier in the Thermomix.

The order is a little different to doing it by hand, as are the ingredients. You put in the jug 200 grams of white sugar and 110 grams of blanched almonds. Zap it, zap it good. Probably about speed eight for a good thirty seconds. Rub the mixture between your fingers after it stops, if you want it finer go another thirty seconds. It depends whether you’re using caster sugar or regular, or slivered almonds. You want really fine. Tip this mixture into a bowl.

Put 125 grams of sweet butter into the jug and melt it at 60 degrees and speed two for about three minutes. Actually, I got this completely the wrong way round today, I did the butter first. I had almond meal, last time I went up to the IGA that’s all they had. I forgot about turning the sugar into icing sugar. So after the butter had melted I put in the two hundred grams of sugar and kept it at sixty degrees for another three minutes on speed three to dissolve it.

Then you put back in the sugar and almond mixture, plus three quarters of a cup of plain flour, half a teaspoon of baking powder, three eggs and your flavouring. I’m doing orange and poppyseed because blood oranges have just come in. I want to make something with the insides of the blood oranges, so in pursuit of my snout to tail philosophy when it comes to citrus fruit I’m saving the zest. Ignore the instructions for doing citrus zest in the Thermomix, you need a Microplane. You can’t Thermomix everything, you know.

I tend to use a lot of citrus zest, so the zest of twelve blood oranges should disappear quickly from the neat little glass dish I’ve stored it in. You want the zest of two oranges for this recipe, it’s about a tablespoonful. You also want a tablespoon of poppy seeds, put those in the jug too. Have I got everything? Sugar, butter, almond meal, flour, baking powder, egg, orange zest, poppy seeds. All right. I zapped it on speed eight while looking through the hole in the lid, stopping when it looked well and truly mixed.

I did use the friand tin this time, they do look a lot more appealing in that shape.

As you only get six to a tin I also used a patty cake tin inherited from my Nanna. I put the tins in the oven for a couple of minutes, then cut off a chunk of cold butter to grease them with. I’ve tried the spray oils and they don’t work as well as butter. You have to be a bit careful releasing the friands, wait until they’re cool and maybe run a knife around them if you can’t ease them out.

I overcooked them a little because I like the tops crunchy. Not that I get to eat them. They really are quite a bit lighter in texture done this way than by my old fashioned manual labour way. I going to have to think of some other flavours than orange and poppyseed and pistachio. If I did hazelnut and cocoa powder that would be a Nutella flavoured friand. Now there’s a thought. Wow, stream of consciousness invention right there.